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.
It wasn’t a Nazi salute. It was a heartfelt and perhaps ill-advised gesture that, in the moment, could be misinterpreted as a Nazi salute. I think we shouldn’t be so quick to jump to conclusions.
/s
Did they drove off in a Tesla ? (asking for a friend)
Mr. Mangione had a heartfelt and perhaps ill-advised gesture against a CEO.
🤣
A heartfelt gesture indeed. Remember everyone: Jury Nullification.
I just don’t nazi it…
I’m stunned … again !! … I have visited Auschwitz and it’s impressive beyond words. At the entrance of the former gas chambers there is a sign asking to respect and remember those who died in there and keep silent in the chambers. Everyone did except for Israeli students. That is what brought the tears to my eyes. Betrayed and disrespected again, this time by their own.
Oh believe me, Israeli trips in Kraków are the worst kind of tourists in every aspect possible. They are louder than British stag parties, more obnoxious than Americans and their favourite thing is crying about antisemitism when they are removed from somewhere for causing disturbances or making a huge mess. They do not understand the idea of rubbish bins and you can trace their paths by following cigarette butts, empty crisps packets and spit.
Israelis are broadly recognized to be some of the worst tourists in the world.
Is there any chance the ones making all the ruckus and disrespect were non-Jewish Israelis? That’s not an excuse but it makes it make more sense than actual Jews being so disrespectful. And if it is young Jews doing it, can you make it make sense? Do you have some sense for why / how they might be thinking?
Keeping in mind just being bad tourists doesn’t quite explain it. Kids groups tend to be shite tourists no matter where they are from. But even I knew as a 10yo not to act stupid when visiting some of the more somber locations I went to in the US; no less as a 21yo when I visited Dachau as a non-Jew.
I never know if they are Jewish or not, the groups themselves are distinct because they are always in large groups, with multiple guides and guards, but I can’t tell Jewish or non Jewish Israelis apart just by their faces. Idk why they behave like that. It’s all ages. I sometimes see them out in the city but I heard more chilling stories about them from a guy who operates a bus transfer business to Auschwitz.
[sigh] I’ll never understand this world.
Israel is a middle eastern country with a middle eastern temperament. That is less reserved and controlled than Central Europeans. The majority of Jews in Israel are Mizrahi, descendants from Jews who fled the MENA region, not Europe. They tend to be a bit more noisy and dramatic.
It would be interesting to get the perspective of an Israeli who went on such a trip.
It’s also unclear how prevalent this issue is, or if it’s just a few cases tainting their image. There are lots and lots of Israeli school kids visiting Auschwitz. Probably more than any other nationality. So it might simply be explained by their numbers.
Yup, all fair points and why I was asking hoping OP or someone else might have insights. Thanks.
Maybe the genociders are also not jews, eh? Except for all those interviews where Israeli leaders spell it out with no possible room for denial.
This also mirrors my experience at Aushwitz. Israeli teenagers were generally being dicks around the site and then unrolled several large Israeli flags to take group photos with.
Can’t blame the teens too much as their teachers had no problem with/promoted the behaviour.
I left the place traumatised, these kids… not so much.
Everyone did except this one guy. The other students didnt do this.
This happens a lot more than you’d think. I experienced something similar in Dachau and the guide told me if someone does something unhinged/disrespectful during a tour there’s a 9 out of 10 chance it’s a descendant of a holocaust victim. She didn’t say why she thought that is but she said it’s something that puts the staff on edge whenever there’s an Israeli group visiting. I’m surprised they got the cops involved though.
Not nazi salutes, but Hasidic tour groups in the US has a similar reputation for disrespectful behavior. They’re also the most visibly Jewish group to passerbys, so they drag the whole group’s image down with them and embolden anti-semites.
I wonder how bibi is gonna spin this one into being antisemitism on the side of the people who reported the student.
"The Ministry of Education said that it had disciplined the student from an educational standpoint and that it would conduct an inquiry into the incident to ensure it did not happen again. “The Ministry of Education takes this serious incident very seriously. This is inappropriate behavior that completely contradicts Israeli educational values and the significance of the trip to Poland,” the ministry wrote in a statement, as reported by Channel 13 News. “The student was immediately addressed from both an educational and disciplinary standpoint and will undergo a full inquiry upon returning to Israel. Ministry officials will thoroughly examine the circumstances of the incident and formulate additional educational measures to ensure such incidents do not happen again.” Additionally, the Kiryat Bialik Municipality said in a statement that it would also be disciplining the student, Channel 13 News reported. "
Sounds like his school and community are planning on punishment.
His punishment will be having to join the IDF and killing palestinian babies.
Nah but nice to see they at least keep up the outward appearance of giving a fuck.
Nothings gonna happen to that kid. This is the classic Israeli “We will conduct an investigation” response with zero follow through. They do this to get away with genocide, i’m sure they’ll be able to get away with a “misinterpreted hand gesture.”
Dear god I hope eel-on-musk goes to Poland and tries that. He so deserves to find out.
Edit: clarification: I’m saying I want him to be arrested somewhere that’s not the US
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Depends. Europe isn’t exactly his fan right now, so unless he gets diplomatic immunity, he could get some real charges. He would just pay them off and cry about it on twitter, but it would be a very popular action for any Euro authority to take.
I cordially invite Elon to come to Melbourne Australia and flip his favourite salute.
Its a significantly more painful $23,000 fine there, and if he does it repeatedly there’s a good chance of a 12 month prison term.
https://www.vic.gov.au/fact-sheet-nazi-symbol-prohibition
P. S. If my maths is right he can do it almost 15 million times before he runs out of money, I might have to email Vic gov to ask them to review the fine to be wealth-adjusted.
My grandfather did not fight in World War II for this shit. I hate this reality.
Ikr? I saw someone post one of those grandfather didn’t fight for this meme and I can help think that he would shoot the guys hold that flag you hugging
Yes, you are the baddies.
Are they sending their youth to teach them how to deal with Palestinians?
no, they already know that. they can learn from anyone around them. they go to auschwitz to learn the proudest traditions of their people, and why they can never be allowed to fail (at exterminating the brutes) again.
That’s €376.10, not nearly enough imo.
And 410.57 American freedom eagles.
That’s a first time fee
its around $23000 here in Victoria, Australia
Only in one state of Australia, Victoria. Worth mentioning.
oh right, my mistake. i actually live in Victoria so i originally thought it was a federal law somehow.
Nah it’s all good - it’s confusing because federal-level hate crime and Anti-Nazi laws came in recently also (last month). Those are all mandatory minimum prison sentences though, no fines.
This is an idiotic teenager and should have no bearing on your opinion of Israel. (I shouldn’t have to say this, but if I don’t somebody will m’accuse: please note that I’m not defending Israel.)
Ben Gvir, Netenyahu, and Smotrich go on tv all the time calling for ethnic cleansing and war crimes. Should that have any bearing on my opinion of Israel?
Don’t really want to engage with an obvious troll, but yeah when the head of state says something like that, it should tell you all you need to know. I’ve seen idiotic teenagers from all over the world say idiotic things enough to know not to judge a society by their teenagers.
If you want to ignore the obvious thats on you. And if you want to paint my citations of the facts reported in network news as “trolling” then its reality itself that you have a problem with.
wha? No, I agree with you about Netenyahu etc.
eh, yeah. I guess I am loathe to excuse a teens misbehavior when it just reinforces the criminality of his government, but broadly speaking I do agree that teens arent capable of understanding their own actions like adults should be. I get the feeling theres a lot of apologists here saying One teen doesnt represent much, and how do we know the teen is even jewish, to try to make the issue go away, and I see a lot of disenganuous arguing by the zionists so I get an itchy finger on that. Anyway, my apologies, your reasoning is sound, if inconvenient.
My point is that a teen’s behaviour doesn’t reinforce the criminality of his government, but is mostly orthogonal to it. I can see perhaps there’s a monkey-see monkey-do argument that does link a teen’s behaviour to his society’s, but Israelis are not fond of literal Nazi iconography, so I don’t think that applies here.
If you try to use sketchy arguments like this to reinforce your opinions about Zionism, it only opens you to attack. Please, try to keep a level head, or we’ll all look stupid. Rather than trying to guess if somebody is an apologist based on the consequence of their argument, maybe check if the premise is sound instead like a rational person.
(Aside: I also disagree with you about teens and self-understanding – I do think a lot of teenagers are mature and self-aware; my point is that it’s a high-variance distribution really.)
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and should have no bearing on your opinion of Israel
The behavior of people from a place actually should impact your opinion on that place
Had it been an American there’d either be no comment like yours or it would have been massively downvoted, food for thought
If it had been an American teenager, I doubt there would have been an article posted at all. But if there had been, I doubt such a comment would be downvoted.
I feel like a similar proportion of teenagers from Israel and America are idiots like this one. I remember many teenagers from my highschool (Canada) who would be this kind of dumb. Based on this, I don’t see why people would react differently to my comment, though maybe it’d come across different if the reader is American, not sure. (I think I’d make the same inference about Canadian high schooler as another country’s though.)
…that said, I do agree with you. I have noticed for instance that Japanese high schoolers in public seem to be incredibly polite compared to Canadian ones. You can make a small inference perhaps about the high schools from a country based on a single point of data like this. But – I don’t think this really says very much about the disposition toward Nazism (of the original German trappings) in the general Israeli public.
No need to put a stupid teenager in prison for a longer time for being stupid, but: A day or two behind bars on top of the fine might have had a better educational effect.
He didn’t do it on accident and was fully aware of what he was doing and where he was doing it. Lock that scum up I say.
No objection then.
That’s so crazy it’s almost like people don’t like Nazis… 🤷
Edge Lord asked for that
Wow, ya know I’ve been joking that Israel is full of Jewish Nazis, but…u hh… damn
Throw the book at them.
