Donald Duck Screams ‘Holocaust’ In German Magazine

Donald Duck meant to scream congratulations in a recent comic. Instead, he yelled “Holocaust.”

The misprint was quickly caught by publishers Egmont Ehapa and the magazine was recalled. The publishers blacked the word out by hand and said that a corrected edition of the Donald Duck comic will come out later this week.

According to Comic Book Resources, Donald Duck’s “holocaust” comment wasn’t exactly a typo. The original comic, titled “Where’s the Smoke” and published in 1972, actually used the word holocaust. Carl Barks, who illustrated the comic for Disney, apparently used the word as a synonym for blaze or inferno.

So Donald Duck, in the original cartoon, said:

“(I) present plaques to the lookouts for pinpointing the awesome holocaust!”

Elke Schickedanz, spokeswoman for the publishers, said that this isn’t the first time that the publication has gotten in trouble for printing Donald Duck’s Nazi rhetoric. Egmont Epha also got in trouble when reprinting another Barks cartoon called “April Fools.” Barks had Hitler’s Mein Kampf pictured in several panels of the comic. The Telegraph reports that the company erased the Mein Kampf in several panels “but still came under attack for apparently trivializing the Nazis in a children’s comic.”

Celebrity Cafe reports that Walt Disney was commissioned by the American Government during World War II to produce anti-Nazi cartoons involving famous cartoon characters like Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and Bambi.

Here’s one of Disney’s propaganda cartoons featuring Donald Duck.

What do you think about Donald Duck’s shady Nazi past?