Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said yesterday that it made a "terrible" mistake in approving a recent newspaper advertisement that equated a proposed Arizona zoning ordinance with Nazi book-burning, the Washington Post reported Saturday.

See ad.

The full-page advertisement included a 1933 photo of people throwing books on a pyre at Berlin's Opernplatz. It was run as part of a campaign against a Flagstaff ballot proposal that would restrict Wal-Mart from expanding a local store to include a grocery.

The accompanying text read, "Should we let government tell us what we can read? Of course not . . . So why should we allow local government to limit where we shop?"

The ad, which ran May 8 in the Arizona Daily Sun, was "reviewed and approved by Wal-Mart, but we did not know what the photo was from. We obviously should have asked more questions," said Daphne Moore, Wal-Mart's director of community affairs.

The company will also issue a letter of apology to the Arizona Anti-Defamation League, she said.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), members of Congress and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union criticized the company for the advertisement.

"It's not the imagery itself. It trivializes the Nazis and what they did. And to try to attach that imagery to a municipal election goes beyond distasteful," said Bill Straus, Arizona regional director for the ADL. 

Though the ad includes no apparent Nazi insignia or imagery, Straus said it's a well-known image among people "with any kind of knowledge of the Holocaust."

Straus contacted Wal-Mart on Friday, and company executives told him an apology would be issued.