German court upholds politician’s sentence for Nazi ink
Right-wing nationalist Marcel Zech, facing 8 months in prison, said image of Auschwitz death camp with slogan from Buchnwald was not incitement
Stuart Winer is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
The Brandenburg Higher Regional Court rejected Wednesday an appeal by a far-right politician against his sentence of eight months in prison for displaying a Nazi-style tattoo at a public swimming pool.
The case against Marcel Zech, a member of the far-right National Democratic Party, involves a tattoo that appears to combine an image of the Auschwitz death camp with the slogan from the Buchenwald concentration camp’s gate, “Jedem das Seine,” meaning “to each his own.”
In his petition against the sentence, Zech argued that the depiction of the concentration camp is not incitement because it does not express an opinion, the German-language Märkische Allgemeine daily reported.
The court responded that the view of the Auschwitz watchtower, including the barbed wire, as well as the “Jedem das Seine” slogan, showed approval of the mass murder of the Jews by the Third Reich.
The 28-year-old has admitted displaying the tattoo while visiting a swimming pool. In December 2015, a district court in Oranienburg gave him a six-month suspended sentence. He appealed the ruling but in November 2016 the state court in Neuruppin, north of Berlin, upheld the conviction and lengthened the sentence to eight months.
AP contributed to this report.
