German high school students have caused outrage after they made neo-nazi gestures at Auschwitz and sang a nationalist chant at Bergen-Belsen in two separate incidents.
Pupils 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 popular with neo-nazis.
The pupils from Helmholtz school were confronted by staff at the site last summer, but the incident has only now been made public, The Times reported.
Headmaster Joachim Held said the pupils involved had been 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.’
Around 52,000 people were killed at the site near Hannover during the Nazi regime. Anne Frank was among those who were killed at the site.
In a separate incident at Auschwitz, four pupils from a school in the eastern city of Görlitz were pictured making the ‘OK’ hand gesture, a signal made by neo-Nazis.
The photo was taken in March but has only been reported this week, after the photo appeared on one of the pupil’s Instagram accounts.
Teenage pupils from a German school were pictured making the ‘OK gesture’, which is synonymous with neo-Nazis and white supremacists
The pupils were on a school trip to Poland to learn about the events of the Second World War
A spokesperson for the 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 gesture is used because the sign can depict a W and a P to signify White Power.
Making the gesture is not illegal in Germany, unlike making a Hitler salute.
The children were visiting Poland on a school trip to the Nazi camp. More than 1.1 million people were killed 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 comparing the suffering of the victims to German soldiers at the hands of the Allied forces.
The former prisoner of war and Nazi concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, northern Germany
In 2018 three girls took a picture giving Nazi salutes outside Auschwitz before uploading it to Instagram
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.
One of the two boys involved is the son of an AfD politician, who urged the school not to punish them.
In 2018, three girls caused outrage when they posed with Nazi salutes outside Auschwitz.
While giving a Nazi salute is not explicitly banned in Poland, the law does forbid hate speech based on religion and promoting fascist ideology, with prison sentences of up to three years for offenders.
The girls deleted the image shortly after it appeared on Instagram, but it was picked up by museum authorities.
In 2017, a group of Swedish teenagers were filmed making inappropriate gestures and remarks 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 intervened and made the culprit pay a £250 fine.
