The costume, a blue button-up dress, is accessorized with a green beret and a brown shoulder bag.

It’s “reminiscent of the kind of clothing” young girls are likely to have worn in the 1930s and 1940s, said a product description below the image of a model – a brown-haired girl with a smile on her face and her hand on her waist.

For $25 (plus shipping), “your child can play the role of a World War II hero” on Halloween, it promised.

But the costume portraying Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager whose diary chronicled the horrors of the Nazi regime, was called offensive by numerous critics, including major advocacy groups. So Halloweencostumes.com, an online retailer, removed the item from its website, and its spokesman apologized, saying offending people wasn’t the company’s intention.

Images of the costume began circulating over the weekend. Critics were disgusted, calling it a misguided way of remembering a Holocaust victim.

“We learn from Anne Frank’s life and death to honor her & prevent future atrocity. We don’t exploit her,” the Anti-Defamation League’s St. Louis branch wrote on Twitter.

“We should not trivialize her memory as a costume,” the ADL’s regional director in Arizona said.

As the outrage swelled, Ross Walker Smith, spokesman for Halloweencostumes.com, said on Twitter: “We take feedback from our customers very seriously. We have passed along the feedback regarding this costume, and it has been removed from the website at this time.”

Halloweencostumes.com is owned by Fun.com, which began as small family business operating out of Mankato, Minn.

“There are more appropriate ways to commemorate the legacy of Anne Frank than through a Halloween costume, which is offensive and trivializes her suffering and the suffering of millions during the Holocaust,” said Alexandra Devitt, a spokeswoman for the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect.

Devitt said in a statement that the organization was pleased that Halloweencostumes.com had stopped selling the product.