SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) — New Zealand students who dressed as Nazis for an Oktoberfest party were punished by a university disciplinary committee.
The Lincoln University students were slapped last Friday with a $150 fine, ordered to visit the Holocaust museum in Wellington and required to submit an essay on a relevant topic, the New Zealand Press Association reported.
The university’s disciplinary committee also ruled that the two students whose costumes were the most offensive be forced to perform 150 hours of community service.
Also last Friday, a Norwegian-born taxi driver in New Zealand who lost his job for refusing to wear a black-shirted uniform because it reminded him of the Nazis was denied compensation from authorities.
Harald Kleiven, 70, said the black shirts reminded him of the "wickedness perpetrated by agents of the Nazi Reich throughout continental Europe," according to the New Zealand Press Association.
Kleiven, who lives in the town of Nelson on the South Island, said his father fought in the resistance when the Nazis occupied Norway from 1940 to 1945.
