German store embarrassed by Hitler portrait cups

April 10, 2014: Coffee cups with a small Hitler portrait are pictured in Bielefeld Germany. (AP)

BERLIN – A small German furniture store chain says it inadvertently ordered 5,000 coffee cups bearing a faint portrait of Adolf Hitler from China.

Christian Zurbrueggen, co-owner of the Zurbrueggen chain, told German news agency dpa on Thursday that 175 of the offending cups were sold before customers reported the problem.

Zurbrueggen said he wants to take the cups "out of circulation."

The 4,825 unsold cups have been destroyed and Zurbrueggen says he's offering a $28 voucher for the return of the others, which were sold for 1.99 euros each.

The cups have a faint feature of a Nazi-era stamp bearing Hitler's portrait and a postmark with a swastika in the background overlaid with another layer of decoration. They were ordered from a trade fair in China and delivered last month.