During a visit to the Auschwitz Memorial, Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice-President of the International Auschwitz Committee, commented on the right-wing extremist gestures of pupils from Greifswald during their visit to the Auschwitz Memorial and the current reactions and debates on the subject:

“By exhibiting the ‘white power salute’ at the Auschwitz memorial site, the students from Greifswald made a conscious decision to signal their support for the supremacy of the ‘white race’. Consequently, at this place in particular, the young people endorsed the racist ideology and acts of extermination and murder of so-called sub-humans.

In the eyes of Auschwitz survivors, the attitude and actions of these young people are seen as aggressive, heartless and disgraceful. At this scene of horrific systematic genocide, these young people are deliberately insulting the relatives of the survivors who were tormented and murdered there. At the same time they are openly mocking the memories and feelings of the survivors themselves by publicising their actions on social media. It is incomprehensible and particularly disheartening for the survivors of Auschwitz that the parents of the young people in question appear not to understand the dimensions of violence and hatred behind their children’s actions, and refuse to take suitable educational counter-measures.”