Retired police officer in court: Nazi propaganda on the Internet!

Retired police officer in court: Nazi propaganda on the Internet!

On Monday, a retired police officer in Graz went on trial for allegedly sharing Nazi content on social media over a period of eight years. The defendant was accused of denying the Holocaust and glorifying Adolf Hitler. Prosecutor Alexandra Ibler emphasized in her plea that the 64-year-old, who was still active until 2015, deliberately spread Nazi propaganda. This was done both by sharing posts that claimed that conditions in Auschwitz were positive and by spreading news that portrayed the mass murder of Jews as a lie, such as the Courier reported.

The defendant justified himself by citing his historical interest and explained that he had not read most of the contributions carefully. “I just saw the titles and shared them,” he told the court. However, this was met with skepticism as judge Julia Noack made it clear that sharing such content carries with it a responsibility. The defense attorney portrayed the man as a naval historian who simply wanted to draw attention to the fate of all war victims, as the Crown informed. Despite this argument, the court found problematic content in his chats, including posts about the Rhine meadow camps, where German soldiers were held in unsanitary conditions.

Holocaust denial as a criminal offense

The prosecutor made it clear that Holocaust denial is not a historical debate, but a criminal offense. Particularly clear examples of the defendant's content included articles claiming that German corpses had been falsely passed off as Jewish. The defendant was of the opinion that these views did not come from him, but from the published articles to which he referred. Despite his explanation that he shared the messages in a short period of time and therefore did not scrutinize the contents, the court maintains the urgency of the issue. A verdict is expected late this afternoon.