A couple who recreated the wedding of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun have been condemned by Jewish organizations for promoting hate crime.
The groom dressed in an SS uniform while the couple rode in a camouflaged car which was draped with a swastika flag. A Nazi-era Luftwaffe cross was painted on the side.
Named only as Fernando and Josefina by local media, they chose their wedding date carefully – April 29 – to commemorate the date of the wedding of Hitler and Braun in 1945. Days later, the Nazi leader and his new bride killed themselves in a bunker in Berlin as Russian troops advanced.
Josefina wore a swastika which was pinned to her wedding dress. The registration of the car was SS 181151.
Fernando, a civil servant, invited friends who were dressed as German soldiers. The couple have two children, one of whom is named Reinhard, named after the SS general Reinhard Heydrich, who was an architect of the Holocaust.
The ceremony took place at a church in Tlaxcala, a state east of Mexico City. Two years earlier, the couple had held a civil ceremony in the same style.
Reports of the wedding in Mexican media which painted the nuptials as a surreal curiosity prompted condemnation by Jewish organizations which said the wedding incited antisemitism.
“Our institution strongly condemns the distortion and trivialization of the memory of six million Jewish brothers killed in the Holocaust and the contempt by those who deny or distort history, as well as all those who showed this despicable lack of respect,” said Ariel Gelblung, of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said in a statement.
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The organisation, which is named after the late Nazi hunter, urged Mexican authorities to take action against the couple for inciting a hate crime.
Tribuna Israelita, an organization which represents the Jewish community in Mexico, said in a statement: “(We condemn) any action that apologies for and extols Nazism, an ideology responsible for the murder of millions of people, including six million Jews as unfortunately happened during this wedding”.
The National Council for the Prevention of Discrimination, a state organization, said that Mexican law prohibits anti-Semitism and said the wedding was an example of “intolerance”.
However, the groom and bride dismissed allegations that they were promoting hate crime, accusing critics of judging them – and Hitler – “without information”.
About 60,000 Jewish people live in Mexico, according to the most recent government census.
A recent survey on discrimination found that religious beliefs were the second most common cause for discrimination.
Jaime Romanowsky, a Jewish specialist in genocide, said denying the Holocaust was a sign of ignorance.
“Denying the Holocaust is to deny the evidence, something which even the real perpetrators did not deny,” he told El País, a Spanish newspaper.