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Bell Canada is begging forgiveness after featuring the line “Belsen was a gas” on billboards [2] that went up during the Jewish New Year. The line, the title of a Sex Pistols song, referring to Bergen-Belsen, the German concentration camp, appeared in the ads on a button worn by a young Japanese girl outfitted with various punk-style accessories. Bell Canada officials say they couldn’t read the words on the small proofs they saw. “It’s a bad ad on any day, perhaps particularly so this week,” says a spokesman. “It was unintended. The reality is we would never knowingly run an ad with an offensive slogan like that.” Here are the Pistols playing the song live [3] at one of their last shows, in 1978.
—Posted by Tim Nudd