KFC’s Push Notification Encouraged Customers to Buy Fried Chicken to Commemorate Nazi's 'Night of the Broken Glass'

KFC has committed a massive blunder in Germany.

Customers with the fast food giant's app received a push notification alert encouraging them to purchase KFC's fried chicken on the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Kristallnacht is German for "Night of Crystal," which is often referred to as the "Night of Broken Glass," a series of Nazi pogroms against the Jewish community in Germany in 1938, per the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

KFC Kristallnacht Push Notification Blunder Details

KFC customers were reportedly shocked to see a KFC push notification persuading them to buy the fast food giant's fried chicken in celebration of the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht, per Gizmodo.

The push notification reads as such when translated into English: "It's memorial day for Kristallnacht! Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken! Now at KFCheese!"

The actual German push notification referred to Kristallnacht as Reichspogromnacht, which, according to Vice News, was the favored term for Kristallnacht.

German customers were understandably appalled by KFC's notification for its insensitivity and tone-deafness for the event.

Many KFC customers in Germany, such as Twitter user Nicholas Potter, took to social media to post the notification to express their anger at the out-of-touch push notification.

Dalia Grinfeld, the associate director of European affairs at the Jewish NGO Anti-Defamation League, also went to Twitter to express her disappointment.

She tweeted that KFC should be ashamed of itself for how wrong its push notification on Kristallnacht was.

KFC would later apologize for its push notification an hour later, saying it was an "automation error in [its] system," and that it was unplanned, insensitive, and unacceptable.

The fast food giant also said that it would check its internal processes immediately to avoid it or anything similar to it from happening again.

Even so, social media experts in Germany are dumbfounded that KFC has no way of checking its automation system to catch it earlier, per The Guardian.

A Deeper Look Into Kristallnacht

For those unaware, Kristallnacht and Reichpogromnacht are names that refer to a single event: "The Night of Broken Glass." It is the name of the various violent anti-Jewish pogroms in Nazi Germany which took place on Nov. 9 and 10, 1938.

The event was caused by the assassination of German embassy official Ernst vom Rath in Paris at the hands of Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew.

In retaliation to von Rath's assassination by a Jew, Nazi Party officials, members of the Nazi Stormtroopers, and Hitler Youth torched and vandalized Jewish synagogues, Jewish homes, schools, and businesses, per History. The "crystal" in the name "Kristallnacht" or "Night of Crystal," refers to the glass shards from the windows of Jewish buildings.

They also killed around 100 Jews and arrested 30,000 more during this period to be sent to Nazi concentration camps.

The event is widely considered in modern times as the start of the Jewish Holocaust in Germany.