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Police hunt Brits who Hitler-saluted in concentration camp

Jörg Luyken
Jörg Luyken - [email protected]
Police hunt Brits who Hitler-saluted in concentration camp
Buchenwald. Photo: DPA

Authorities in Germany are searching for two British men who took a picture of themselves performing a Nazi salute in a torture chamber in Buchenwald concentration camp.

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The two British men posted the picture to a Twitter account associated with the neo-Nazi group National Action, director of the Buchenwald Foundation Prof. Dr. Volkhard Knigge told The Local.

When exactly the incident took place is not clear, but what can be seen from the photo is that the men were “were showing their support for National Socialism in all its forms, including mass murder,” said Knigge.

The room where the men took the picture was a chamber in a cellar in which the gestapo murdered over 1,000 men, women and children in the most gruesome way imaginable, by hanging them from metal hooks hammered into the wall.

The hooks can be seen in the photograph, said Knigge, and the men had written the words “meat hooks” onto their image.

No one saw the culprits, who were masked, take the picture, said Knigge, despite the fact that the room is well observed by security.

“They must have watched it and studied exactly when they could do it, like a bank robbery.”

An estimated 56,000 people died at the concentration camp before it was liberated by the US Army in 1945.

Growing problem

Neo-Nazis turning up at the camp near Weimar, Thuringia is an increasing problem, Knigge warned.

“The rate of these instances has doubled over the last two years, ever since the emergence of the AfD and Pegida.”

Memorials from the Nazi period are “a seismograph for societal change,” he said.

The action by the British far righters broke several German laws including the banning of insulting the victims of the Holocaust and respecting the dead.

Although it is possible that the men have since returned to to the United Kingdom, Knigge expects British police to cooperate in tracking the men down.

“I can’t believe that the British police, who have acted decisively against this kind of behaviour in the past, would not investigate,” he said.

Little is know about National Action, although they appeared to be a far right youth movement with high levels of secrecy.

According to British tabloid the Daily Mirror, the group is led by a politics graduate from Essex University.

SEE ALSO: Concentration camp 'can't take any more visitors'

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