Sports firm says sorry for 'Nazi' training shoes

The sportswear manufacturer Umbro was bitterly condemned by Jewish groups yesterday for naming a training shoe after the gas used by the Nazis to murder millions in the Holocaust.

Umbro, which produces the England football team's kit, was attacked by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which saw the Zyklon shoes advertised on the internet. The centre's Dr Shimon Samuels demanded that the shoes be withdrawn immediately, that an investigation be launched into how they came to be named, and a public apology made. In a letter to Peter McGuigan, the Umbro chief executive, Mr Samuels described the use of the Zyklon name as an insult to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. The shoes were "an encouragement to neo-Nazis and skinheads who terrorise the football terraces", he said.

In Britain, the chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, Lord Janner of Braunstone, said: "There is no word more hideous to those who know what happened in the extermination of human beings with Zyklon. I am sure the manufacturers did not intend to cause grave distress but knowing as they now do that Zyklon was what the Nazis used to exterminate human beings, they should take the shoes off the market."

Umbro spokesman Nick Crook said the name did not appear on the trainers but had been used in advertisements for three years. The company had already changed the shoe's name in Britain and planned to do the same in other countries, he said. He said the company wished to "express our sincere regret".