An Israeli high school student was arrested and questioned by police for doing a Nazi salute during a school trip to Auschwitz, Israeli media reported on Sunday.
The teenager from Kiryat Bialik was on his school’s field trip to Poland when he did the gesture under the entrance sign to the camp.
He was questioned for two hours by Polish police and was fined approximately NIS 1,500 after security guards observed him performing the salute. The museum also captured the incident on its security cameras; the footage was handed over to the police.
Polish police charged him with promoting Nazism, local media reported. Performing a seig heil is illegal in Poland, and carries a potential sentence of up to two years in prison.
The fact that a 16yo has worse reasoning skills than an adult is fairly well researched. I wouldn’t call them a child though. But as a society we decided long ago that an <18yo isn’t held to the same standard of criminal liability as someone 18 or older. I don’t really know that I’ve seen what you’re referencing with 25 year olds being called kids. I just think there are too many folks in this thread that seem to think a high school student should go to prison for something like this.
Prison? No, that is not a fair response. Community service? sure. But I would say the same thing for an adult.
The sad part is that their home nation can not really do much to teach about the evils of genocide to this youth so I imagine this will be more of a “you made us look bad” sort of think.