Customer ‘sick’ after finding swastika earrings in Palmerston North op shop

A pair of swastika earrings were accidentally put on sale in the Arohanui Hospice shop in Palmerston North. Photo / Supplied

An op shopper says she felt “sick” after stumbling across a pair of swastika earrings for sale in a Palmerston North op shop.

Arohanui Hospice, which runs the shop, said the earrings accidentally made it through their screening process.

The customer, who did not want to be named, saw the gold swastika earrings at the Arohanui Hospice shop while looking at the jewellery section.

“I was quite shocked,” she told NZME.

“[I] wasn’t sure why they didn’t just immediately throw them out. The jewellery was the first part in the shop I looked at and I felt quite sick while looking around at the clothes for like two minutes before I had to leave.”

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The swastika was appropriated by the German Nazi Party during Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in the 1920s and continues to be used by neo-Nazis today.

It can also represent “well-being,” in the ancient language of Sanskrit, and is often depicted as a symbol of peace and unity in the Hindu religion.

The customer at the store wanted to tell the shop staff to do better in controlling what they put out for sale, and “not let things like this appear in their store”.

Arohanui Hospice chief executive Clare Randall said the volunteers who processed the jewellery items did not identify the swastikas when they were processing them.

“The management of the shop were not aware these items were available for sale. This has been bought to the attention of the manager and also the volunteers,” she said.

“We have clear policies in place that we do not sell items that are weapons, decorative or otherwise. We do not sell items such as ivory, we do not sell items that might cause offence, such as these earrings, and we do not sell items displaying gang emblems.”

Randall made it clear they did not support the sale of swastikas, and this occasion was an accident.

“We are a charity, our shops generate vital funds to support the delivery of specialist palliative care across our region. We operate our shops with a dominantly volunteer workforce. While we do our very best to train our staff and volunteers to screen items not fit for sale, on rare occasions items can innocently slip through. This is unfortunately one of those occasions.”

Randall said they were using this opportunity to refresh staff and volunteers about awareness when screening items.