Nazi photo schoolboys apologise to war veterans
BY MICHAEL FOX
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Five Auckland schoolboys who made a tearful apology to war veterans for worshipping Nazi symbols will now teach museum visitors about the horrors of the Nazi regime.
The five students caused outrage when they kissed a swastika, bowed before a Nazi banner and gave a Nazi salute during an Auckland Grammar School visit to the Auckland War Memorial Museum.
Pictures of the students which appeared on social networking website Facebook deeply upset museum staff and war veterans.
Today the five students and three school staff went back to the museum, where each student apologised to two war veterans and museum staff.
The two veterans had met the boys on an earlier trip before they paid homage to the Nazi symbols.
Today's meeting was a "very emotional, full-on and quite an intense experience for the boys", said Russell Briggs, the museum's director of communications and technology.
"There were tears in the eyes and it was very emotional. The boys expressed a great deal of sorrow and apologised directly to the veterans for their actions."
Mr Briggs said the museum was happy the apology was genuine and it was a good learning experience for the boys.
"This is the first time it has ever happened and this is decades and decades of working with Auckland Grammar and hundreds of other schools."
Mr Briggs said the boys characterised their actions as an immature prank.
"It was something that got out of control and they didn't understand the effect it would have on their families and their school and the people of New Zealand.
"They apologised to all the people they hurt, including all the people of New Zealand, which I thought was a brave thing to do, and it made me think that they really understood the magnitude of what they had done."
He said the boys would be part of a special project to teach people about Nazi history, including the horrors of the holocaust .
Earlier this month, Lincoln University fined 15 students $200, made them write an essay on the Holocaust and visit the Holocaust Centre and the German embassy, both in Wellington, at their own expense. They had attended a party last month dressed as Nazis and concentration camp victims. The students were scheduled to visit the Holocaust Centre today.
Meanwhile, Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres said he was ashamed to be an old boy of Auckland Grammar after the actions of the schoolboys.
Auckland Grammar principal John Morris said the incident happened at the beginning of the year, although the school first learned of the photos on Friday after a former pupil viewed them on Facebook. Mr Morris said there was "absolutely no justification for the immature and unthinking actions of the boys".
The pupils' families were told yesterday and the boys will face unspecified disciplinary action.
This is the second high-profile embarrassment for Auckland Grammar this year. Four of its first XV students were suspended for up to six weeks by an Auckland Rugby Union disciplinary committee after a brawl with Kelston Boys High players during an Auckland secondary schools rugby semifinal.
Holocaust Museum director Inge Woolf wants a meeting between the pupils and Holocaust survivors such as herself.
"It might seem a long time [ago] to them, but it's still in the lifetime of young survivors."
Ms Woolf fled from Vienna when the Nazis invaded, and came to New Zealand in 1958 after her family were killed in the Holocaust.
"It's very upsetting for anyone that understands how terrible the Nazis were. We certainly don't want that here in New Zealand – it's not the way the New Zealand society behaves," she said.
Mr de Bres said the behaviour was totally inappropriate. "As an Auckland Grammar old boy I feel somewhat ashamed and I expect the school to deal with it, as they appear to be doing."
He encouraged schools to use the Holocaust Centre to educate pupils about the war.
"It's a kind of thing that certainly ought to be taught and, you know, in a sense there's a failure when students take it this lightly."
Secondary Principals Association president Peter Gall said the Holocaust was included in the social science curriculum but not every school covered it.
Returned and Services Association national president Robin Klitscher said the boys' actions were disgusting. "Above all it's profoundly ignorant and I think that is probably what causes the greatest offence."
- With NZPA
- © Fairfax NZ News
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This museum is allowed to support Nazism? How upsetting... Just by having the swastika up is enough to remind me of these crimes We should erase all evidence of Nazi activity...burn all the books
Hmm. As they were just fooling around, I don't have a problem with this. They were joking. If they were actually sympathetic to Nazi views, that would be another story.
For the record I think a lot of you guys would be shocked to find that holocaust jokes are very common among teens, these ones just happened to do it in school uniform and post pictures.
Seems that since they know what the nazi salute is that they would have some education on the matter. Kids these days aren't as stupid as people seem to take them for. As a kid who recently finished secondary school I must admit my classmates and I knew about the holocaust from about age 12 and most children know about the second world war However they do seem very sorry and seem to have learnt their lesson
Me and my friends used to crack jokes about Hitler and the Nazi party all the time at that age. These kids made the dumb mistake of posting the photos of it online for every to see. They were joking and everyone took them way too seriously
Lostidea - I agree with nearly everything you're saying except your last point. However, I think what some people on this forum (myself included) are trying to say (clumsily or otherwise) is that althoug people shouldn't be forced to feel the same way about things as anybody else does, they should have the decency to respect other people's feelings.
In saying that, the boys involved in this particular incident, may not be mature enough to understand that yet. The "executive" brain is the last part of the brain to develop.
Unfortunately, the Internet (and the free speech that goes with it) has made these types of "jokes" more publicly accessible (and therefore damaging).
Rex - I think it's a sort of Chicken and Egg thing and there's still plenty of debate whether The Holocaust should only refer to the Jewish element or not (or at least that's what Wikipedia tells me). I'm with the "or not" side. But have no issue agreeing to disagree on that point! :)
Baggy #304
"The bottom line is just because your not offended don't belittle some of the other 6,000,000,000 people you share the world with because they are."
So lets say that these kids actually belive that hitler is the bee's knee's and actually worship him (i understand they don't im using it to make a point). Does that mean that you can offend them because there is more of you?
I think personally that the behaviour of these kids is poor and not well thought out. I personally do not feel that teachers, schools or anyone bar the 'kids' who did this should be 'blamed' HOWEVER
The whole ideals of these fight are quite funny (note i said the ideals, not the event). We are getting fired up and angry telling these 'kids' that they should not be doing this. Hilter and the SS were also big on telling people what to do and what to do. My grandfather fought and died in WWII and i hope through his actions we have learnt freedom of speech and expression.
While i think personally these 'kids' are a in need of being taught the reasons there actions are silly, is it not there desision to make? All we can do is teach the children, explain what horrible things the Nazi's did and then if they still decide to do this stuff, we have to live with it.
While the majority of people feel one way about a particular thing, it does not make it right to force the rest to feel the same, regardless what the feelings are.
get over it!! my god, do you know 80 millions people died in this war. how can you get over that. have you even seen your best friend with no head. have you ever seen trucks of dead people they look like wood and ready to burn.
Baggy #304
You are right that other groups were targeted by the Nazis but I disagree with you that the Holocast was not about the Jews.
Targeting other groups was more about having a mechanism to do it and that mechanism was in place purely because they set up the concentration camps in order to exterminate the Jews.
But I appreciate what you are saying and I think your post is one of the best here and has summed the topic up extremely well.
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my mate follows the nazi crap but i mean y would you do that you would get jumped by everybody especially me