Government urged to condemn Nazi-themed wedding

A Jewish human rights organization has urged the federal government to condemn a Nazi-themed wedding that took place in Tlaxcala last Friday.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center said it was outraged by the wedding, which was held in a Tlaxcala church on the 77th anniversary of the date Adolf Hitler tied the knot with Eva Braun.

The center said in a statement that the bride wore a wedding dress with a swastika and the groom was dressed as a Nazi SS officer. In one photo, the bride, identified only as Josefina, sits atop a Volkswagen beetle draped with a Nazi flag. Her new husband, identified as Fernando, stands beside the vehicle.

Shimon Samuels, director for International Relations of the Wiesenthal Center, questioned why the federal government has not denounced the wedding in Tlaxcala, Mexico’s smallest state.

“Mexico has voted for the United Nations resolution that condemns the distortion of the Holocaust and all forms of racism. … It also has exemplary state agencies such as Conapred [the National Council to Prevent Discrimination]. However, there have been no reactions by the state or human rights organizations condemning this outrage. … We expect Mexican authorities to take appropriate measures,” he said.

Ariel Gelblung, the Wiesenthal Center’s Latin America director, said the organization “strongly condemns the distortion and trivialization of the memory of six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.”

“… Mexico must adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism and incorporate it into its legislation to prevent such hateful behavior,” he said.

According to the Wiesenthal Center’s statement, the groom idolizes Reinhard Heydrich, an SS chief considered a principal architect of the Holocaust. He and his wife have a son called Reinhard and a daughter called Hanna Gertrud, named after Nazi pilot Hanna Reitsch and Gertrud Schotlz-Klink, leader of the National Socialist Women’s League in Nazi Germany

The newspaper Milenio reported that Fernando is a public official, but didn’t say which government he works for.

He told Milenio that he and his wife would have waited until next year to get married if they were unable to find a church that was available on the anniversary of Hitler’s 1945 marriage. Fernado said he and his wife were married in a civil service on April 29, 2016, in Ecatepec, México, where they live and belong to a club whose members reenact wartime events.

Josefina told Milenio that she didn’t know much about the history of Nazi Germany until she met her husband. “I support him because I have a responsible husband,” she said.

Fernando openly admitted that he admires Hitler, who committed suicide alongside Braun the day after they were married.

“I know that for a lot of people Hitler is genocidal, a symbol of racism and violence. But people judge [him] without having information or because they believe in the history of the victors,” he said.

“Hitler was a vegetarian, got his country out of extreme poverty and returned territory lost in the First World War to his people. His people loved him,” he said.

With reports from AFP and Milenio