Students at a Colombian police academy had the paradoxical idea of disguising themselves as Nazi soldiers and SS officers as part of a “cultural exchange” with the honored country of Germany, sparking a scandal and forcing President Ivan Duque to apologize publicly.
A dozen photos from the ceremony held at the school were posted on the official police Twitter account on Thursday. The students are wearing Wehrmacht uniforms and one of them has a small black mustache, imitating Adolf Hitler. Others wear the black ES uniform and armbands with the swastika. Three of them are posing with a German shepherd on their feet, in front of a fake cardboard “fortress”.
One room was decorated with red, black and yellow balloons, the colors of federal Germany. Visitors could see a replica of a Luftwaffe plane and weapons of the Nazi army. Other students wore T-shirts with the word Polizei on them.
“From the Simon Bolivar Police School in Toulouse, we are organizing an International Week with a guest country in Germany. “Through cultural exchanges, we enhance the knowledge of our students,” the Twitter account where the photos were posted proudly states. “It is an honor to be a police officer,” the statement added.
The photos were received with surprise and disbelief, causing a rain of comments on social networking sites but also embarrassing the authorities.
“Any apology from Nazism is unacceptable and I condemn any event that uses or refers to symbols that refer to the perpetrators of the Holocaust that claimed the lives of more than 6 million people,” President Duke wrote on his Twitter account.
Police fired the school principal and apologized for what he called “pedagogical action in world history”.
In a joint statement, the German and Israeli embassies in Bogota stressed that they “completely reject any form of apology to Nazism.”
Η αστυνομία της Κολομβίας, που μπήκε στο στόχαστρο με αφορμή τη βίαιη καταστολή των διαδηλώσεων, την περασμένη άνοιξη, προσπαθεί να αλλάξει την εικόνα της, έχει δραστηριοποιηθεί πολύ στα μέσα κοινωνικής δικτύωσης και προσεχώς θα αλλάξει και τη στολή που φορούν τα μέλη της.
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