Nazi tattoos in Germany

Nazi tattoo in German swimming pool, photo Facebook/Alexander Marguier

In Germany, neo-nazis not only daub swastikas and affix nazi stickers (if you try to remove these, then police may stop you). Sometimes, neo-nazis have nazi tattoos as well. Like the one on this photo, from a swimming pool in Oranienburg town (where there used to be a concentration camp during Hitler’s Third Reich).

The tattoo pictures the entrance to the infamous nazi concentration camp Buchenwald, with its slogan Jedem das Seine, “to each what he deserves”.

Buchenwald entrance

The nazi slogan implied that while obedient followers of fascism deserved a good life, concentration camp inmates like Jews, Roma, communists, LGBTQ people, etc. deserved abuse and death.

The difference between the letters of the Oranienburg nazi swimmer and the Buchenwald original is that the concentration camp used Latin script, while the neo-nazi used Fraktur. The nazi party strongly promoted Fraktur as ‘true German script’. In 1941 they stopped doing so, as it hindered communication with the many countries occupied by nazi armies.

From Wikipedia:

An ExxonMobil ad campaign in January 2009 touted Tchibo coffee drinks at the company’s Esso stores with the slogan Jedem den Seinen! The ads were withdrawn after protest from the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and a company spokesman said its advertising contractor had been unaware of the proverb’s association with Nazism.^[5]

In March 2009, a student group associated with the Christian Democratic Union used the slogan for an education campaign in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany), but later withdrew it due to public outcry.^[6]

The Oranienburg swimming pool far right man has another nazi tattoo, not mentioned in today’s Dutch NOS TV report on this. It is just partly visible on the left side of the photo.

It is a ‘Schwarze Sonne’, black sun, a nazi symbol; of Heinrich Himmler‘s SS in the twentieth century; and also of the far right ‘Azov battalion‘ paramilitary outfit in Ukraine today.

Azov Battalion symbol

The Azov Battalion emblem shows the black sun symbol in white against an orange background. On the foreground, in black, is another nazi symbol: the wolfsangel.