In two different cases, German high school students incited uproar by singing a nationalist song at Bergen-Belsen and making neo-Nazi gestures at Auschwitz.
Students from a school in the western city of Bielefeld, aged 14 and 15, were heard singing ‘Germany for the Germans, foreigners out’ at the Bergen-Belsen memorial. The chant is prevalent with neo-Nazis.
Last summer, employees at the Helmholtz school addressed the pupils, but the event was just recently made public, according to The Times.
According to Headmaster Joachim Held, the offending pupils were disciplined but not expelled.
He told public broadcaster WDR: ‘This is a problem for society as a whole. Incidents like this happen to us more often than we would like.’
About 52,000 people were killed at the site Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near Hannover during the Nazi rule – including Anne Frank.
In a separate incident at Auschwitz, four students from a school in the eastern city of Görlitz were pictured making the ‘OK’ hand gesticulation, a signal made by neo-Nazis.
Despite being taken in March, the picture was finally made public this week after it surfaced on one of the students’ Instagram accounts.
A representative for Scultetus High School said the four pupils have been disciplined and told to spend time assisting in a workshop for disabilities.
Clemens Ardnt, of the Saxony state education office, told German newspaper Bild that the pupils were ‘made aware of their misconduct’ by the school’s headmistress.
The ‘OK’ hand gesture, where the thumb and index finger touch while the others are held outstretched, is used by the far-right.
The gesticulation is used because the sign can depict a W and a P to signify White Power.
Unlike the Hitler salute, the gesture is not outlawed in Germany.
The children were visiting Poland on a school trip to the Nazi camp. More than 1.1 million people were slaughtered at the camp during the Second World War.
Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the Buchenwald Memorial site near Weimar, said antisemitic or offensive behaviour is now almost a daily occurrence at the sight.
He said some visitors have made Hitler salutes, shouted ‘Seig Heil’ and compared the suffering of the victims to German soldiers at the hands of the Allied forces.
He said the rise of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in February’s general election has been a contributing factor.
Children have recently been seen laying down in the ovens of the crematorium for photographs, Mr Wagner said.
An AfD politician’s son is one of the two lads involved, and he pleaded with the school to spare them.
In 2018, three girls provoked anger when they posed with Nazi salutations outside Auschwitz.
Polish law prohibits hate speech based on religion and fascist ideology, but it does not specifically bar offering the Nazi salute. Offenders may face up to three years in jail.
The girls deleted the photo soon after it emerged on Instagram, but museum authorities later retrieved it.
In 2017, a group of Swedish teenagers were filmed making improper gesticulations and comments while visiting the memorial complex.
Meanwhile, an Israeli student ended up in hot water when he dropped his trousers at the Majdanek concentration camp close to the Polish capital Warsaw.
In that case, the Israeli Ministry of Education interceded and made the offender pay a £250 fine.
I would say to those immature people making Nazi salutations – come and meet some of the remaining few survivors and listen to their stories, it would break the hardest of hearts.
These survivors were seen earlier this year attending a service to commemorate the Liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945. There were numerous Heads of State there to honour the few people who by some godsend survived the camps. Perhaps they were spared to be witnesses to the Holocaust.
I frequently wonder why there is so much animosity—in fact, why there is hatred at all—for Jews. All of us are God’s living creation, and even if you don’t believe in that, we exist for a reason. I’m still not sure what that reason is.
However, sadly this is what happens when the naive and the uneducated are exploited and fooled into perpetrating atrocities. This is also what happens when people are allowed to forget.
The ‘OK’ hand sign has been embraced by ‘the right’ because children have been told for years that it’s not OK to be white in their own country – action, reaction, cause and effect!
Voicing that your country is not yours – is that a problem, I’m not sure, but it could be I suppose. These youngsters might be singing a chorus to a song, but would they go to war for their country? Or if their country was at war, would they believe that their country was worth fighting for?
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 