The 42nd St shuttle to Times Square was covered in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan symbols for the new Amazon series. Photo: Twitter.

Online retail giant Amazon has decided to withdraw a rather extensive ad campaign featured throughout the New York subway system that showed US flags overlaid with German Nazi and Japanese Imperial symbols, Buzzfeed reported on Tuesday. It was a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, not Amazon, who told the reporters.

Passengers were shocked on Tuesday to discover the ads plastered on the New York City subway chairs, including one New York city assemblyman who called on holiday shoppers to say “no” to Amazon this season; assemblyman Dov Hikind is a Brooklyn native and son of Holocaust survivors.

“Amazon knows exactly what they are doing,” Hikind said, according to the New York Observer. “The pain they are causing by plastering the subway with Nazi regalia is disgusting.” Many critics noted that Holocaust survivors were actually forced to ride on the subway on Tuesday, along with the suggestive Nazi imagery. Some noted the irreverence of the ads appearing on a train.

One of the ads showed a US flag with the white stars replaced with the Nazi eagle emblem, or the Parteiadler, with a cross instead of a swastika. Another showed a vague mashup of the US and Japanese Rising Sun flags, the latter of which, unlike the Nazi flag in Germany, can still be flown legally in Japan today.

The new Amazon series, “The Man in the High Castle,” based on Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel of the same name, is set in an alternative world that shows what life after WWII would be like in America if the Nazis had won the war.

Needless to say, users on social media were up in arms. Free speech advocate Pamela Gellar, notable for helping to organized a Muhammad cartoon-drawing contest, slammed Amazon and the MTA, which banned her political group’s ads when it axed all political ads earlier this year.

Seriously?? #MTAbigots @MTA https://t.co/hcLcskaFZj pic.twitter.com/CqUTWUbhFB

— Pamela Geller (@PamelaGeller) November 24, 2015

.@MTA Bigots Plaster Nazi Flag Ads on NYC Subway But BAN ALL AFDI Ads: Despite having won numerous legal free … https://t.co/e8JqKT28zk — Pamela Geller (@PamelaGeller) November 24, 2015

Criticism continued to trickle in on Twitter even after MTA’s announcement.

Hey @amazon @MTA Subway transit ads with the Statue of Liberty doing a nazi salute are not ok. At all.

— ian smile (@endashes) November 24, 2015

Just appalling. Shame on @MTA & @amazon for incredibly tone-deaf & offensive ad campaign. https://t.co/vUDc0JjJOt — Aryeh Bernstein (@aryehlou) November 24, 2015

Jewish Pol Is Disgusted with @amazon But I’m Disgusted Even More with the @MTA https://t.co/6nRugjUUXZ

— Boo Boo Reports (@askbooboo) November 24, 2015