Students share pictures of themselves making neo-Nazi gestures at Auschwitz (2025)

Footage has emerged showing teenagers making a neo-Nazi pose at the Auschwitz gates, while others sang a nationalist chant at Bergen-Belsen.

The German students caused an uproar after making the gesture at the Auschwitz death camp, where around 1.1 million people were murdered during the Holocaust.

The high school pupils from Germany made the ‘OK’ gesture, which has been widely used by white supremacists when visiting the concentration camp, The Times reports.

Four boys from the city of Görlitz made the gesture in March, but news of the incident emerged this week after a picture appeared on a student’s Instagram account.

A spokesman for the Scultetus high school said the four were disciplined and assisted in a workshop for people with disabilities, according to The Times.

While the Nazi or Sieg Heil salute is illegal in Germany, Austria and Slovakia, making the ‘OK’ sign is not.

Clemens Arndt, from the Saxony state education office, told the German tabloid Bild: ‘The pupils were made aware of their misconduct. The headmistress confirmed that the four pupils had understood.’

In a separate incident, the students, aged 14 and 15, sang ‘Germany for the Germans, foreigners out’ at the Bergen-Belsen memorial last summer.

Around 52,000 people died there during Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime before prisoners were released by British troops 80 years ago.

The students were reportedly from Helmholtz high school, which describes itself as a ‘school without racism,’ according to The Times.

Staff confronted the group at the site, it is understood.

In 2018, three girls were pictured making the Nazi salute outside the Auschwitz gate and train tracks, MailOnline reports.

The image was spotted by the Auschwitz museum authorities before the girls tried to delete it off Instagram.

Despite its dark past, the far right’s popularity has surged in Germany in recent years.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) made historical gains in the February election, taking home 20% of the votes – the biggest election result for the right-wing since the Second World War.

The Bergen-Belsen camp was freed on April 15, 1945, with many prisoners being near death with starvation and suffering from typhus and dysentery.

A survivor of the camp’s horrors, Alfred Garwood, told Metro how his family survived the Bergen-Belsen while he was just an infant.

However, his grandparents and aunt were murdered by the Gestapo.

Alfred said: ‘To this day, I don’t know why my family was spared when others weren’t so lucky. On top of that, my father’s mother – who lived in modern-day Lviv, Ukraine – was rounded up with other Jewish women, then locked in a synagogue while it was burnt to the ground.’

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