The offending poster which was removed from the Navi Mumbai restaurant. (PTI)

Mumbai, Aug. 24: The owners of Hitler’s Cross, a restaurant in Navi Mumbai’s Kharghar, today agreed to change the name of their venture at a meeting with Jewish leaders.

They also expressed regret for “hurting the sentiments of the community”.

Satish Sabhlok, proprietor of Hitler’s Cross, held talks with Jonathan Solomon, chairperson of the Indian Jewish Federation, and Abraham Samson Medhekar, president of the Magen Hassidim Synagogue.

Sabhlok was accompanied by his son, Puneet, who is the managing director of the restaurant, and business partner Shakir Siddiqui.

Sabhlok signed a statement admitting that his restaurant was “inappropriately” named. “We knew they did it out of ignorance rather than malice ,” Solomon told The Telegraph.

Hitler’s Cross courted controversy immediately after it opened on August 19. The city’s Jewish community and Israeli consul-general, Daniel Zohar Zonshine, expressed their outrage that a restaurant was named after Adolf Hitler. The eatery had posters of the German dictator in uniform and the Nazi swastika on its signboard and menu cards.

German consul-general Walter Stechel also expressed concern and sent the owners a book on the Crimean history compiled by German historians. “The name and decor of your restaurant play on a period and a personality of German history who brought war, death and grief to millions all over the world, particularly the Jews,” he said.

Stechel also handed over a book to the owners on contemporary Germany which, he believed, “offered better ideas for a thematic restaurant”.

Even Jewish organisations abroad could not digest Sabhlok’s taste for the unorthodox. The Anti-defamation League, a US organisation fighting for the rights of Jews worldwide, said it was shocked to learn that a Mumbai restaurant was named after Hitler, reports PTI.

“This shows the owners’ inability to comprehend that Hitler presided over the mass murder of six million Jews,” its director, Abraham H. Foxman, said.