An Israeli high school student was arrested and questioned by police for doing a Nazi salute during a school trip to Auschwitz, Israeli media reported on Sunday.
The teenager from Kiryat Bialik was on his school’s field trip to Poland when he did the gesture under the entrance sign to the camp.
He was questioned for two hours by Polish police and was fined approximately NIS 1,500 after security guards observed him performing the salute. The museum also captured the incident on its security cameras; the footage was handed over to the police.
Polish police charged him with promoting Nazism, local media reported. Performing a seig heil is illegal in Poland, and carries a potential sentence of up to two years in prison.
You’re free to think that, but I respectfully disagree.
If he kept doing it, sure. But taking him aside and talking to him could be more effective and less damaging than getting the authorities involved and humiliating him to “prove a point.”
Show him that we’re on the same side. If we treat him like an enemy when he really isn’t one, he very well may become one.
Less damaging to whom? To the kid who did a Nazi salute? Sure, definitely. How about to society? Tolerance for Nazis and Nazi symbology only emboldens Nazis and weakens everyone else. Especially in these times when fascists control the most powerful country on Earth.
You’re not tolerating it by taking him aside, explaining to him why it’s not acceptable even as a joke, and warning him not to do it again.