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fiogf49gjkf0d Times of Israel
German ninth graders create Hitler fan club on WhatsAppPolice investigate students from Leipzig who allegedly share Fascist slogans, pictures of Hitler salutes, in secret online groupBy Michael Leidig
October 30, 2014, 12:55 amGeerman police confirmed Wednesday they interrogated two boys from a town near Leipzig who were photographed making Hitler salutes, following claims that an entire class of German schoolchildren set up a secretive neo-Nazi fan club.
The group from the Landsberg School near Leipzig, a city in eastern Germany’s Saxony state, would secretly share their right-wing jokes and extremist propaganda in private among other members of the group using the mobile phone application WhatsApp, police said.
An investigation into the students’ activities was launched after it was revealed that the social media messages they shared included references to Hitler as a “fantastic person.”
Members began comments with each other with “Deutschland – Sieg Heil!” and shared off-color jokes. One example was a sign on the road leading to a mountain saying it was only possible to visit with a Fuhrer (German for guide). Underneath someone had scrawled, “Don’t forget to bring Mister Hitler.”
German officials expressed shock at the revelations, but neo-Nazis in Germany were among the first to go underground using online connections such as the Thule Network as a response to the country’s restrictive laws on far-right activity where they can face jail for glorifying the crimes of the Third Reich.
Making the Hitler salute or using Third Reich symbols like the swastika is illegal according to German law.
The fact that children aged 14-15 were behind setting up an extremist network, however, has caused widespread concern.
Teachers and parents of the 29 pupils in class 9A at the Landsberg School near Leipzig said they had no idea that the children had such extremist right-wing ideologies.
Even the parents of the one Jewish boy in the class said they were stunned when they read about the extent of the anti-Semitic incidents for the first time in their local newspaper. They said their son had never spoken to them about what was going on at school.
Eli Gampel, 54, whose son is the sole Jew in the class, said, “My boy told me that on the hood of his jacket someone had stuck a far-right NPD [National Democratic Party] sticker. It was well known, it seems, that he was Jewish.
“It was on this basis that I have made a formal complaint with police for an investigation, but on the other hand it would definitely be the wrong thing to simply accuse the entire class and tar them with the same brush.”
Gampel, the former head of the local Halle Jewish Community, added: “I thought it was a bad dream when I opened newspapers and read the article.”
He said, however, that it seemed a massive taboo had been imposed in the class, banning anybody including his son from talking about it.
“Even after I read about it, I found it difficult to get him to talk about what went on. It was only through a lengthy discussion that he admitted what was in the newspaper article was essentially true. Of course the content of what was being discussed made him sad and he felt discriminated against,” Gampel said.
Other parents also said they knew nothing about what was going on because the students had kept their activities hidden by communicating using WhatsApp.
Prosecutor Andreas Schieweck, 59, confirmed authorities were investigating allegations of glorifying the crimes of the Third Reich and the police had interviewed two students.
Because of the age of the pupils, school officials have confirmed that specially trained psychologists are meeting parents and the children who are still in the area and have not gone on holiday for the autumn break.
The school headmaster, Lutz Feudel, said the entire school had been shocked about the secret Nazi sympathizers, which he said were confined to one class. He added that getting to the bottom of how it happened was difficult, because the autumn break had already started. He said that the parents of two of the children had been invited to a discussion together with their children, but that a third who they wanted to speak to was on holiday in Spain with his parents.
And he added that he did not want to instantly accuse the children, saying: “Breaking taboos is part of young adulthood. I don’t believe that they wanted to actively promote neo-Nazi ideology.”
David Begrich, who works in Germany as part of the organization “Miteinander” (“With One Another”), which fights against right-wing extremism, said, “It is definitely the time now for education officials to get involved, and not prosecutors. There need to be very clear conversations with all those in the class, and they don’t need to be worried about the consequences in order for the truth to come out.”
“It is also true, however, that in Saxony in the recent past that have been cases in which schoolchildren have been taking part in Nazi demonstrations, and have been exposed as consumers of neo-Nazi music and through postings of anti-Semitic content. However, according to teaching staff at least, it was not noticeable in lessons or from the interaction with pupils,” Begrich added.
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