Bed sheets printed with the infamous Star of David and the word Jude inside were pulled off store shelves around the Western region of the country.
The sheets surfaced last week at the Petaluma branch of Grocery Outlet.
David Carlson, buyer of general merchandise for the Berkeley-based Grocery Outlet chain, confirmed that 15 stores had received the offensive linens, and a total of 24 sets had been recalled and destroyed.
Joey and Fran Piotrkowski of Petaluma — both children of Holocaust survivors — discovered two sets while shopping in their local Grocery Outlet last week.
Sam Salem and Carey Sutton have not been sleeping too well since learning that the linens were made under their manufacturing label Nature at Home; their parent company is Salem and Sons.
Salem and Sutton said that Grocery Outlet, also known by its former name, Canned Goods, was the only store to purchase those sheets.
When they learned about the sheet sets last week, the brothers-in-law — who are Orthodox Jews — were practically speechless. They vowed to investigate the matter.
Neither co-owner understood how it happened, especially since they said the manufacturers of the sheets in question are all Jews. They did learn that the worker cutting the sheets that day was a Mexican immigrant who didn’t speak English.
They also found out that somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 rolls of fabric were bought from one particular factory in South Carolina, and among that lot were two rolls of the offending material.
Salem was in Israel last week, but Sutton was busy trying to find out what had happened. The manager of the mill where the fabric came from was on vacation this week, he was told.
On Monday, Jan. 24, Sutton said, “I want to know who delivered this material, and where it came from, and who sewed it.” When pressed further to share what he knew, he said he wouldn’t know more until the manager returned next week.
“I know this is a [news] story, but this is my life here. We’re going to get to the bottom of this and I don’t want to give false information.”
Salem echoed his brother-in-law. “I couldn’t sleep that night, to know that there are people actually printing this type of cloth. These people should be implicated.”