US fast food chain KFC has apologised after its German app suggested customers should commemorate the Kristallnacht anti-Semitic pogrom by ordering food.

KFC app alert tells Germans to remember Kristallnacht

On Wednesday, November 9, US fast food giant KFC sent a notification to users in Germany suggesting that they “treat themselves to soft cheese and crispy chicken” in order to “commemorate” Kristallnacht, the anti-Semitic pogrom carried out by the Nazis in 1938.

On Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) Nazi thugs torched synagogues, looted and smashed the windows of Jewish owned shops and rounded up scores of Jewish men who were deported to concentration camps. The Nazis used the assassination of diplomat and party member Ernst vom Rath by a young Polish-German Jewish man as a pretext for the violence. Kristallnacht is widely considered as marking the beginning of the Holocaust.

KFC apologises for apparent error

About an hour after users had received the app alert KFC sent another message to apologise. According to the BBC, the message said, “We are very sorry, we will check our internal processes immediately so that this does not happen again. Please excuse this error." KFC Germany has since blamed the error on a bot, saying that automated push notifications were connected to a calendar that lists nationally recognised days and public holidays.

In response, Director of Public Affairs at the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Daniel Sugarman, said the alert was "absolutely hideous". Associate Director of European Affairs at the Jewish NGO Anti-Defamation League, Dalia Grinfeld, tweeted: "How wrong can you get on Kristallnacht KFC Germany. Shame on you!"

In an apology KFC Germany added that it "understands and respects the gravity and history of this day, and remains committed to equity, inclusion and belonging for all".