Neo-Nazis deny Holocaust, burn Israeli flag in Finland

Finnish police were investigating two antisemitic incidences in the country, as the world marked Holocaust Remembrance Day.

JANUARY 28, 2020 13:34

Finnish neo-nazis start their Independence Day march with swastika flags in Helsinki, Finland December 6, 2018. (photo credit: MARTTI KAINULAINEN/LEHTIKUVA/VIA REUTERS) — Finnish neo-nazis start their Independence Day march with swastika flags in Helsinki, Finland December 6, 2018.

(photo credit: MARTTI KAINULAINEN/LEHTIKUVA/VIA REUTERS)

As world leaders marked Holocaust Remembrance Day and the liberation of Auschwitz 75 years ago, police in Finland were investigating a case of neo-Nazis denying the Holocaust and burning the Israeli flag.

On Sunday a small group of neo-Nazis convened outside Tampere railway station in the south of the country, where they read out a prepared statement on the Holocaust, News Now Finland has reported.

Siellä on ilmeisesti poltettu Israelin lippua pic.twitter.com/2NQobNHb6c
— Dmitry Gurbanov (@Dimmu141) January 26, 2020

According to the media outlet, the group, members of Kohti Vapautta! (Toward Freedom!), posted a Holocaust-denying statement to their website in which they claimed there is "no conclusive evidence to support the allegation of genocide," and that "no body of a Jew killed by poison gas has been found."

They furthermore claimed that German doctors gave life-saving treatment to Jews during the war, and that eyewitness accounts of the death camps were nothing more than "propaganda." They concluded their protest by burning an Israeli flag.

On Monday, which marked Holocaust Remembrance Day, a synagogue in Turku in south-west Finland was daubed with red paint. According to News Now Finland, Jewish community leaders reported the incident to police.

President Sauli Niinistö attended a memorial event in Auschwitz on Monday to mark the event, while the Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin said that the commemorations “remind us of one of the most brutal and shocking periods in human history,” adding "We need to know our history and its developments to ensure that such an atrocity never happens again.”