German Police investigate video of students giving Nazi salute before visiting Auschwitz

HANNOVER (GERMANY), June 24 (DPA/EP) –

The German Police have opened an investigation after the dissemination of a video that shows several 17-year-old students performing the Nazi salute before visiting the Auschwitz concentration camp, to determine whether they used symbols of organizations considered unconstitutional.

The trip took place in mid-May, when a group of 13 students from a center in Laatzen participated together with teachers on an excursion to Krakow. Four of them were recorded giving the Third Reich salute, in a gesture that the school director said was “completely immature.”

The director explained to the newspaper ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’ that the incident took place the afternoon before the visit to the concentration camp and that the students had also seen videos of the dictator Adolf Hitler. The document was published on the Snapchat application and the teachers noticed it upon their return.

The center has temporarily expelled the five students involved, including the one who recorded the video, and has distanced itself from the gesture. Not in vain, the use of symbols linked to Nazism is illegal in Germany and is only authorized in educational or historical contexts.