World
Police hunt ‘neo-Nazis’ who performed Hitler salute in morgue at Buchenwald death camp
May 26, 2016 16:11
Police in Germany are investigating after two suspected British neo-Nazis were pictured performing a Hitler salute in Buchenwald concentration camp.
The photograph, published by National Action, a known British neo-Nazi group, shows two men with concealed faces saluting in the camp where more than 56,000 Jews were murdered.
In the photo, the men can be seen holding a National Action flag while giving the salute in an underground morgue known as the “corpse cellar” at the camp.
German police said they had not yet identified the men.
A police spokesman said: “We are investigating unknown perptrators, because the faces are distorted.
“But we take such actions very seriously."
The pair could face up to three years in prison, under strict laws which forbid Nazi symbols including the Hitler salute.
National Action’s website shows masked men carrying swords, Nazi flags and banners which read “Hitler was right”.
The group, who claims to have several dozen members in the UK published the photo on the Twitter feed of its regional branch in the north-west of England.
The branch’s Twitter profile reads: “Warm up the ovens, it’s time to get baked”.
Volkhard Knigge, the director of the Buchenwald memorial, said: “This is a serious dishonour to all the nearly 280,000 people held at Buchenwald, among whom there were also Britons.
“The likelihood of being caught doing the sort of thing seen in this photograph is pretty high.
“It therefore appears that the perpetrators did not act spontaneously, but had thought out and prepared what they did in advance.”
Karen Pollock, chief executive, Holocaust Educational Trust said: "To enter a concentration camp and perform the Nazi salute is nothing more than a salute to their own idiocy - their openly antisemitic attention seeking is a deliberate attempt to belittle the memory of the Holocaust, insult survivors and cause offence to the Jewish people."
