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Lettering above the gate of Auschwitz: In the environment of corona deniers, the lettering based on the inscription »Vaccination sets you free« was used repeatedly
Photo: PAWEL ULATOWSKI/ REUTERS
A Berlin teacher was rightly dismissed without notice because of an Internet video with a still image of a Nazi concentration camp gate with the words "Vaccination sets you free".
According to information from Tuesday, the Berlin labor court decided this in a procedure that the teacher had initiated.
The »Berliner Zeitung« had previously reported .
The court ruled that the video was "an inadmissible trivialization of the Holocaust" and that the man's continued employment was "unreasonable".
According to the court, the educator had referred to the fact that his video was covered by the fundamental right to freedom of expression and artistic freedom.
According to his own account, the man wanted to use the video published on YouTube to express personal criticism of statements by Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU), which were also shown in the video.
In it, Söder announced an expansion of vaccination offers in view of the corona pandemic.
The state of Berlin fired the teacher last August because of the video, arguing that he equated the state's promotion of vaccination with the Nazi dictatorship and the Nazi concentration camp system.
The Labor Court confirmed the view.
With his video, the man criticized the vaccination policy supported by the state of Berlin and its school senate, among other things, and exceeded the permissible level with the choice of image and lettering.
Allusion to NS lettering
According to the court, the video began with a still image of the gate of a Nazi concentration camp, into which the text »Vaccination sets you free« had been inserted using image processing.
On the gates of various Nazi concentration camps was the cynical inscription »Arbeit macht frei« (Work sets you free).
These included the Auschwitz extermination camp in what is now Poland.
The lettering has also appeared at demonstrations against corona measures in the past.
In Nuremberg, the police therefore investigated, for example, on suspicion of incitement to hatred.
The Berlin vocational school teacher had already occupied the school supervisory board for a while before his dismissal.
As early as the first Corona autumn, the man had described masks as “modern swastikas”, as reported by rbb, among others.
According to the “Berliner Zeitung”, the educator can appeal against the judgment at the regional labor court.
sun/AFP
