Tuesday. 19.03.2024

A Heil-Hitler salute made at a memorial commemorating a notorious Nazi concentration camp is set to cost a couple of Finnish tourists dearly, after it came to the attention of the authorities.

The visitors from Finland, men aged 50 and 52 respectively, took photographs of each other at the camp near Munich.

A third man photographed them doing so.

The men said they had not been aware that the raised arm salute was illegal in Germany.

"But they could have come to the idea perhaps that it is frowned upon in Germany," a police spokesman said on Monday.

Banned for life

All three have been banned from the Dachau site for life, and the authorities are to press charges.

Symbols and signs relating to the Nazi era are banned in Germany, unless placed in context in museums, for example.

Dachau was the first camp opened by the Hitler regime immediately after it came to power in early 1933. It was initially used to hold political opponents and was subsequently expanded.

It was liberated by United States forces in April 1945, days before the end of World War II.

Finnish tourists banned from Dachau after giving Hitler salute