JERUSALEM, ZAGREB -- The Simon Wiesenthal Center has asked Croatia to stop the distribution of sugar packets featuring Hitler’s image.

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The Center has called on Croatian authorities to put an end to the production and distribution of sugar packets with Hitler’s image and printed anti-Semitic jokes.

The Center has issued a statement signed by its director Ephraim Zuroff, expressing its “disgust at the fact such a product could have been made at this day and age, in a country where the Holocaust was for the most part perpetrated by the local Nazi collaborators.”

Žarko Puhovski of the Croatian Helsinki Committee told B92 the most worrying aspect of the scandal was a lack of reaction in the Croatian society.

“This is not about someone spraying graffiti, this was printed in several thousand copies, for weeks, perhaps months, and no one reacted. Then Novi List journalists reacted. Then there was silence again, and then the Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement”, Puhovski said.

Puhovski said he hoped the company producing the sugar packets as well as those distributing them would be punished, adding that the main problem still remained with the public that “accepts anti-Semitism”.

For her part, owner of the Požega-based company Anita Ivaneèiæ declined to offer any comment.