Some 200 posters rejecting fascism and anti-Semitism were recently put up by a group of young people in the eastern Swiss town of Brunnen — and quickly torn down.
The posters display a man throwing a swastika into a garbage can and slogans such as “Keep Your Surroundings Clean.” The 20-year-old woman who created the posters told the Zurich Jewish weekly Israeleitische Wochenblatt that the second series of posters would be affixed with stronger glue.
The artist said she had been watching with trepidation the growth of neo-Nazi groups whose members dress like skinheads in leather vests and boots.
“I decided it was enough for now and that something had to be done, rather than wait until things got as bad as in Germany,” she said.
She also wanted to awake her region, which is the German-speaking part of Switzerland, to what is going on and prevent a recurrence of what happened 50 years ago.
The Israeleitische Wochenblatt writes that a few members of the anti-fascist group have received threatening letters.
However, they have not been deterred. They say they are delighted with the positive reaction they have received from the media and much of the population, which exceeded their expectations.
In Brunnen on Aug. 1, a Tamil from Sri Lanka was beaten up and about 40 neo-Nazis demonstrated, bearing emblems proclaiming, “I am proud to be Swiss.”
Local citizens wrote letters to their newspaper condemning the neo-Nazis.
Commenting on this, the creator of the antifascist posters said, “We shall not give up. Our next step will be to talk with the racists about their ideas.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
