German ninth graders create Hitler fan club on WhatsApp

Police
investigate students from Leipzig who allegedly share Fascist slogans, pictures
of Hitler salutes, in secret online group
German 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.
The fact that children aged 14-15
were behind setting up an extremist network has caused widespread concern
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 would definitely be the wrong
thing to simply accuse the entire class and tar them with the same brush’
“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.
‘Breaking taboos is part of young
adulthood. I don’t believe that they wanted to actively promote neo-Nazi
ideology’
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.”