Former Swedish neo-Nazis become Holocaust commemorators

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
They used to paint swastika graffiti, get into street fights with immigrants, distribute anti-Semitic propaganda. But after studying the cases of a few of the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II, some former Swedish neo-Nazi teenagers came to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial to underline their new attitudes. The kids, some of whom were active members of neo-Nazi groups, came to the memorial on Monday to present the findings of their research into the stories of 16 Holocaust victims from their hometown of Karlstad, and add pages of testimony for the previously unknown dead. The project, named Combatting Social Unrest, is the initiative of Swedish Holocaust educator Christer Mattsson. The concept is to take troubled youths off the street, confront their prejudices and ignorance and slowly convert them into Holocaust educators themselves. "The first time I took a neo-Nazi to Auschwitz, I didn't know what to expect," he said. "But after seeing it, after seeing where Jews used to live, he said: "I can no longer deny it happened, or salute what happened."