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NAZI

Swedish language class teacher in Holocaust row

A substitute teacher has been told off for challenging a Holocaust denier during a Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) class in southern Sweden.

Swedish language class teacher in Holocaust row
The former Nazi death camp Auschwitz. Photo: AP Photo/Alik Keplicz

The teacher claimed one of the students questioned the Holocaust after watching a news segment about the persecution of Jews in an SFI class at adult education centre Kärnan in Helsingborg, newspaper Helsingborgs Dagblad has reported.

But the student said he was misunderstood and claims the teacher yelled at him.

The school co-ordinator later criticized the teacher over the incident – which prompted the student to leave the classroom – according to a recorded meeting about the incident quoted by Helsingborgs Dagblad.

“The student talked to me and he said he felt misunderstood and insulted and painted as a Holocaust denier and Nazi,” the co-ordinator is quoted as saying on the recording.

“What he said was to deny the Holocaust,” replied the teacher.

“Yes, but he felt unfairly treated after he had been accused of that.”

“He wasn’t accused. I only told him it is not okay to say that the Jews just lie.”

The co-ordinator went on to later add: “You should remember that what we think of as history is the history we've been taught. When we have students who have read other history books there's no point setting facts against each other.”

School principal Lena Stenbäck told The Local on Thursday morning that she was to meet with the teacher on Tuesday to discuss the incident, which she said had left the student "very upset".

“I can’t say that the teacher has done anything wrong – I’m sure he tried his best. But a direct conflict in front of all the other students can so easily get out of hand and our opinion is that it is better to deal with that outside of class.”

“The class was about Auschwitz, so they were supposed to discuss it. If a student denies the Holocaust you should challenge that – it’s part of our mission as a school – but this is a matter of how you challenge it.”

The Holocaust has been a hot topic in Sweden recently, after Jews voiced concern of a fresh wave of anti-Semitism following the fatal attack on a synagogue in Copenhagen.

Last week, Swedish Radio was forced to apologize after an interviewer asked the Israeli Ambassador to Sweden if Jews themselves were responsible for anti-Semitism.

NAZI

Austrian rapper arrested over neo-Nazi songs

Austrian authorities said Tuesday they have arrested a rapper accused of broadcasting neo-Nazi songs, one of which was used by the man behind a deadly anti-Semitic attack in Germany.

Austrian rapper arrested over neo-Nazi songs
Austrian police officers patrol at the house where Adolf Hitler was born during the anti-Nazi protest in Braunau Am Inn, Austria on April 18, 2015. Photo: JOE KLAMAR / AFP

“The suspect has been arrested on orders of the Vienna prosecutors” and transferred to prison after a search of his home, said an interior ministry statement.

Police seized a mixing desk, hard discs, weapons, a military flag from the Third Reich era and other Nazi objects during their search.

Austrian intelligence officers had been trying for months to unmask the rapper, who went by the pseudonym Mr Bond and had been posting to neo-Nazi forums since 2016.

The suspect, who comes from the southern region of Carinthia, has been detained for allegedly producing and broadcasting Nazi ideas and incitement to hatred.

“The words of his songs glorify National Socialism (Nazism) and are anti-Semitic, racist and xenophobic,” said the interior ministry statement.

One of his tracks was used as the sound track during the October 2019 attack outside a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle.

In posts to online forums based in the United States, the rapper compared the man behind the 2019 Christchurch shootings that killed 51 people at a New Zealand mosque to a saint, and translated his racist manifesto into German.

Last September, an investigation by Austrian daily Der Standard and Germany's public broadcaster ARD said that the musician had been calling on members of neo-Nazi online forums and chat groups to carry out terrorist attacks for several years.

They also reported that his music was used as the soundtrack to the live-streamed attack in Halle, when a man shot dead two people after a failed attempt to storm the synagogue.

During his trial last year for the attack, 28-year-old Stephan Balliet said he had picked the music as a “commentary on the act”. In December, a German court jailed him for life.

“The fight against far-right extremism is our historical responsibility,” Austria's Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said Tuesday.

Promoting Nazi ideology is a criminal offence in Austria, which was the birth place of Adolph Hitler.

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