Swastika Laundry

As recently as the mid-1960s in Dublin there was a laundry called Swastika & Bells whose trucks roamed all over town emblazoned with the ancient symbol appropriated by the Nazis.

Click here for information about the origins of this photograph.

Guardian - Notes & Queries - Thursday March 14, 2002

In Ballsbridge, Dublin, in the 1970s, I remember the Swastika laundry. Down the sides of its tall redbrick chimney, clearly visible from the surrounding area, was painted the name in block capitals, with large swastikas at each end. Does anyone know the origins of this firm, and how such an infamous symbol could have survived for so long?

Stephen Ryan, Dublin.

Guardian - Notes & Queries - Thursday April 11, 2002

Nick FitzGerald (Notes & Queries, March 28) is wrong to claim that in 1912, when the Swastika laundry was founded, the symbol was not infamous. In 1910, Guido von List, poet and nationalist, suggested the swastika as a symbol for all anti-semitic organisations, and the National Socialist party duly adopted it in 1919/20. The fact that the laundry did not subsequently change its name, and carried this symbol high on its chimney for decades after 1945, is not insignificant. Fred Lowe, Ballsbridge, Dublin.