Halloween websites selling Anne Frank children's costume

Online retailers selling a children's Halloween outfit labelled as an "Anne Frank girl's costume" have pulled the item from sale.

The blue dress, green hat and satchel combination was captioned by HalloweenCostumes.com: "Now your child can play the role of a World War II hero".

The dress comes with a "destination tag sewn to the collar".

The costume quickly drew the ire of Twitter users outraged that the Holocaust victim is now a Halloween subject.

The costume was quickly pulled from the Walmart website, but remains available on Amazon and other smaller outlets.

In some cases, the costume was renamed "World War Two evacuee girl".

Fun.com, which runs the HalloweenCostumes.com website, issued an apology through spokesman Ross Walker-Smith.

"We sell costumes not only for Halloween but for many uses outside of the Halloween season, such as school projects and plays," he said.

"We offer several types of historically accurate costumes — from prominent figures to political figures, to television characters."

Anne Frank was a German-Jewish teenager who hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam for much of her young life, before she died in a concentration camp in 1945.

Her posthumously published diary became one of the best-selling memoirs of the Holocaust.