Symbols of Evil - the Swastika, the Z, and QAnon | Documentary

[00:00:02]Time and again, harmless symbols are turned into dangerous weapons. Nobody knew how to exploit them better than the National Socialists.

[00:00:11]>> Hey, Hitler. [cheering] >> Symbols are misused to this day.

[00:00:17]>> Q is a a movement, okay? It says think for yourself, >> sometimes with deadly consequences.

[00:00:26]Why do such simple symbols [music] still have such power over us? Where did they actually come from? And how did they become what they are today?

[00:00:45]A chapel in Berlin, Rudo.

[00:00:51]In 2017, the pastor makes a disturbing [music] discovery here.

[00:01:06]The bell, which has been [music] calling people to worship for decades, bears a swast sticker.

[00:01:16]It's now kept in a museum.

[00:01:21]The church, like hundreds of others, was built during the Nazi era.

[00:01:27]To this day, national socialist symbols are still being found in buildings from this period.

[00:01:43]The army goes to war under the banner of the swastika with devastating results.

[00:01:50]More than 60 million people will die in the Second World War and in the extermination camps.

[00:01:59][music] The swastika was the flag under which people went to war, under which they died, and under which they did atrocious things in its name because it symbolized the inhumane, anti-semitic and racist ideology of national socialism.

[00:02:37]>> [music] >> In the 1930s, it stands for widespread enthusiasm.

[00:02:45]There's barely a town or a building that doesn't fly the swast sticker.

[00:02:50]>> It was like a frenzy in the early years.

[00:02:53]They enthusiastically supported the national socialists. Now everything will be different. Now a new era is coming.

[00:03:01]The good times are coming. Inside the swastika had been the official party symbol of the NSDAP for a decade already.

[00:03:11]Some supporters say that the design came from Hitler himself, but the party leader probably only approved it.

[00:03:28]The design is well thought out. Red is the color of the workers. [music] White stands for the bourgeoisi and red, white, black are the colors of the old empire. The swastika is always turned to the right.

[00:03:43]Putting all politics aside, it's an excellent symbol and of course an excellent marketing tool that was given to the public. A black element on a white background. And that on a red flag, it's bold.

[00:04:03]Hitler deliberately organized his party like a company. The swastiker was his logo.

[00:04:15]He was a good marketing strategist and brand technician. Nothing he did uh was natural or visceral. It was all planned and packaged.

[00:04:28]>> Soon the symbol is omnipresent.

[00:04:30]emlazed on everyday products, hair clips, wine bottles, and even musical instruments.

[00:04:38]>> In daily life, German people would come across in confectionary. So, for example, sweets and celebration cakes with a swastika symbol on it. um there they would come across the symbol in board games even in the shape of a cross word puzzle uh would be the shape of the swast sticker.

[00:05:03]The market is soon saturated by the sheer volume of products.

[00:05:07]The industry the industry picked up on it very quickly. Everyone wanted to cash in on the symbol and advertise their close relationship with national socialism.

[00:05:18]The Nazis didn't want that because they thought it would seem ridiculous.

[00:05:23]>> In May 1933, the NSDAP passes what was known as the law for the protection of national symbols. It's intended to prevent the sale of swastik.

[00:05:37][screaming] The swastika is supposed to bring the German people together. Under this banner, the murder and destruction will soon begin. What makes the symbol so effective?

[00:05:57]A good symbol becomes the the creation of people's imagination. They can see things which aren't there. And and that is really the point of a powerful symbol is a way of uniting people by allowing their imaginations to see different things in that symbol.

[00:06:18]Far away in China, a German firmly believes in the protective power of this symbol. Nanjing in eastern China, then the capital. The German merchant John Rabber [music] has been living here for several years. Far away from home, he believes in the NSDAP and believes it to be a beneficent party.

[00:06:39]He's a member His new homeland is under threat.

[00:06:49]Japanese troops are advancing further and further into China. Japan and the Empire of the Swastika maintain close relations.

[00:06:58]Since 1936, they've been allied in the fight against communism.

[00:07:03]In December 1937, Japanese troops invade Nanjing.

[00:07:14]Within 7 weeks, up to 300,000 Chinese are murdered. A bloodbath.

[00:07:20]The attack will go down in history as the Nanjing [music] massacre.

[00:07:33]John Raer wants to help the Chinese in their hour of need.

[00:07:38]He has a swastika flag measuring 3x 6 m laid out on his property and marks out a protection zone using other flags.

[00:07:47]He hopes that this striking feature will deter Japanese fighter planes from bombing the territory of their allies.

[00:07:56]His plan [music] works and his home is spared.

[00:08:00]Under the cover of the propaganda symbol, John Raer [music] saves 200,000 lives in those seven weeks.

[00:08:17]Only later back in Germany does it dawn on John Rabber that he had in fact made a pact with the devil.

[00:08:25]When he tries to draw attention to the atrocities in China in Berlin, he's briefly imprisoned.

[00:08:32]Today he's known as the Oscar Schindler of China.

[00:08:39]The true origin of this powerful symbol [music] is veiled in shadow.

[00:08:46]In 1871, the ruins of an ancient city are uncovered in what is now Turkey.

[00:08:53]They were discovered by Henri Schlean, the renowned German archaeologist.

[00:09:00]He discovered lots of treasures, lots of jewelry, silver and gold. And in the process of his archaeological excavations, he found a significant amount of swastika signs insignia [music] in the ruins.

[00:09:21]A total of 1,800 antique crosses, which with their [music] hooks look like wheels, capture the treasure hunter's imagination.

[00:09:33]In his writings, he then proposed that Troy was actually Aryan Germanic, which is not true, but nobody was able to prove it to be false. Schleman was just Schleman, and that's what people believed.

[00:09:48]Schllean is merely suggesting a cultural connection to India. He's not making racist assumptions. But in the German Reich, nationalist organizations include the swastika in their coats of arms and the legend of an Aryan Troy gains traction. The driving force behind this is the occultist Gidolo list. Inspired by Schllean's discovery, he spreads crude theories about a supposedly Aryan master [music] race of people who had victoriously fought their way from Troy to Gmania. List was concerned about the renewal and rejuvenation of the Aryan race which he believed had been destroyed and he talked about the resurrection of the Aryan race um through actually through quite specific eugenic breeding policies. Of course um his theory was absolute nonsense and nothing that holds any water at all today. In reality, the swast sticker could be found all over the world long before it was used for Nazi marketing and unlike the later swastika could be turned to the right or left.

[00:11:02]In Japan, the swastika is still part of everyday life. Here, it's called mangi and adorns Buddhist temples.

[00:11:10]The swastika is also at home in pop culture quite apolitically. In the manga series Tokyo Revengers, a group known [music] as the Mangi Gang engages in fierce street fights. Their trademark, the swastika.

[00:11:28]The swastika is probably most widespread in India.

[00:11:50]The word swastika comes from Sanskrit meaning well-being. So there's a different association in the origins of the symbol and the word swastika to the way in which it was used as the hacken crit the hooked cross in Nazi Germany.

[00:12:09]>> So originally the swastika is not a symbol of evil. On the contrary, it's a symbol of happiness and divinity.

[00:12:21]Germanic tribes [music] were already adorning themselves with the swastika around 2,000 years ago. Spearheads and other artifacts bear witness to this.

[00:12:31]They probably adopted [music] the symbol from the Romans when they began to conquer Gmania.

[00:12:41]There is a kind of primordial thing like um the swastika being the sun or a streak of lightning which is seized by many cultures in many different ages for different reasons. They don't necessarily inherit it from each other.

[00:12:55]It doesn't necessarily migrate visually from one culture and era to another.

[00:13:03]In Europe at the beginning of the 20th [music] century, many people were fascinated by this insignia. The Carsburg Brewery in Copenhagen is a reminder of this. Swast stickers still [music] decorate the building today.

[00:13:17]The exotic looking symbol [music] of luck is particularly popular in advertising.

[00:13:24]The swastika was emlazed on Carsburg's beer and lemonade bottles until 1940.

[00:13:42]Even today, the emblem seems difficult to get rid of. In 1992, Autumn transforms a forest in Brandenburg into an eerie natural canvas. The yellow of the larches traces a huge swastika 60x 60 m.

[00:13:59]Villagers had planted it and allowed it to grow in 1938 in honor of Hitler. It had been an open secret in the village ever since.

[00:14:09]It was only after public exposure that some of the trees were finally cut down.

[00:14:17]>> These symbols trigger something in people. They are a constant reminder of what happened in this country.

[00:14:32]It's not the only symbol that the National Socialists make their own. Long before Hitler came to power, the salute that would soon bear his name was part of his party's rituals.

[00:14:47]Just a few years later, the Hitler Salute is a necessary part of any celebration or parade. inseparably linked to the national socialist era in almost every area of life.

[00:15:06]The gesture has an important function.

[00:15:08]It's intended to symbolize the bond between like-minded people.

[00:15:13]Above all, however, it makes it abundantly clear who belongs and who does not.

[00:15:22]The salute is obligatory.

[00:15:25]Signs all over the country encourage people to raise their hands.

[00:15:34]The people who didn't return the salute, but instead tipped their hats, for example, were immediately identified and denounced.

[00:15:49]Jewish citizens are also marginalized by the salute. Since 1937, they've been banned from using it or risk [music] punishment.

[00:15:58]Another stigma.

[00:16:01]Only a real German is allowed to greet others like this, say the Nazis.

[00:16:15]Hundreds of thousands of Jews fought for their German fatherland in the First World War. And national socialism was of course an incredible blow to the self-image because many people really assumed that things couldn't get that bad.

[00:16:32]I fought for this country. I speak German. I feel German. I am proud to be German.

[00:16:40]>> For others, the salute becomes a duty.

[00:16:43]even for the youngest.

[00:16:46]The key scene from the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty can be seen on a school mural. Instead of kissing the princess, the prince wakes her up from her sleep using the Hitler salute.

[00:17:00]In some places there are ways of avoiding the salute like at the felt harrenhala in Munich.

[00:17:10]Here in 1923, Hitler's march to mobilize like-minded people for a coup against the government was stopped by the state police at gunpoint.

[00:17:24]The 15 riers who were killed were later honored as martyrs.

[00:17:30]During the Nazi era, a monument at the side of the feltenhala commemorates them. Anyone passing by must give the Hitler salute.

[00:17:40]But time and again passers by [music] literally avoid this ritual by taking an alley at the back which is popularly known as dukabagasa or sherker's way.

[00:17:55]>> The linguistic concept of the sherker basically highlights how the salute ostracizes people. So anyone who doesn't give the Hitler salute is a sherker from the point of view of the people.

[00:18:10]But the Hitler salute is actually not a German invention.

[00:18:19][screaming] >> Hitler borrowed from others. He borrowed most things which were ritual and symbolic actually from Mussolini who was the the fascist prototype.

[00:18:36]Italy has been ruled by Bonito Mussolini since 1922.

[00:18:41]The self-proclaimed duche greets his people with a very similar gesture years before Hitler.

[00:18:50]The only real difference is his slightly spled thumb.

[00:18:56]Mussolini did not come up with the gesture himself either.

[00:19:01]Legend has it that the so-called Saluto Romano originated in the Roman Empire.

[00:19:12]The whole thing is is a very very powerful ritual which superficially is rich in historical associations because of course everyone thinks it's the uh Caesar, the Romans, the Roman emperors. They all think that that's what they did to the gladiators.

[00:19:35]>> An ancient Roman [music] greeting. A bronze statue in Rome is said to provide the proof.

[00:19:42]The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius greets us with a raised arm from his horse, but this is probably more of a patronizing gesture.

[00:19:56]A painting in the Louvre in Paris might be able to provide more answers.

[00:20:02]The oath of the Herati from 1784 depicts a Roman legend. Three brothers raised their hands to their father before going to war.

[00:20:14]However, their Saluto Romano seems more likely to be a product of the artist's imagination.

[00:20:22]The artist Jacqului Davidid shoots to fame as a result [music] of this painting.

[00:20:33]The supposedly Roman greeting only became really wellknown thanks to the popular historical films of the early 20th century.

[00:20:42]But here too, it was all fake.

[00:20:57]The national socialists saw themselves as the successors of the Romans, the great empires of history. Megalomania, I think that's a word that can be very closely associated with national socialism.

[00:21:19]But intelligence reports paint a different picture. According to these reports, Germans often seem to refuse to use the salute and prefer to greet people in their usual way, especially after the start of the war.

[00:21:39]Those who were not giving it were putting themselves in some kind of danger. So there was always the concern about who might be watching, who might be listening. So for example, um children at school could be disciplined if they failed to use the right greeting. We know that Catholic priests got into trouble with the authorities um for refusing to give the Hitler salute.

[00:22:05]>> A man from [music] Deacon Sheeed and Hunro also puts up resistance, the pastor Hal Schneider.

[00:22:12]He [music] steadfastly refuses to salute the swastika flag.

[00:22:20]He also begins and [music] ends his confirmation classes without giving the Hitler salute with terrible consequences.

[00:22:33]Paul Schneider is >> Paul Schneider was persecuted throughout his life and for his part he consistently fought back against the National Socialist.

[00:22:47]>> He was arrested by the Gustapo several times as a result. Also because he defended Jews in a sermon.

[00:22:56]He makes drawings of himself in prison.

[00:23:00]He writes his wife [music] Gradel in 1937.

[00:23:06]I don't yet know what will happen to me.

[00:23:08]It's quite possible that the concentration camp will await me. In any [music] case, I haven't yet lost my belief that my decisions and actions were right.

[00:23:20]Shortly afterwards, he's taken away to the newly established Bhanvald concentration camp near Vimar.

[00:23:27]Pal Schneider is murdered here by lethal injection in 1939.

[00:23:45]The salute has come to symbolize the horrors of national socialism and it's a symbol of the masses who follow blindly.

[00:23:57]In 1945, with the end of Nazi rule, the era of the Hitler salute was also over.

[00:24:04]Like the swastika, it's banned and disappears [music] from public life.

[00:24:22]But even today, it hasn't gone completely.

[00:24:26]It's used again and again to provoke, protest, or marginalize others.

[00:24:40]Symbols are also used for propaganda purposes in Russia.

[00:24:51]February 2022, Russian troops invade Ukraine.

[00:24:59]They destroy, torture, and murder civilians.

[00:25:07]And they blame Ukraine.

[00:25:35]A video appears on the internet and it's disturbing. A Russian man has a zed burnt under his skin with a hot iron.

[00:25:49]The letter quickly comes to symbolize the Russian war of aggression.

[00:25:56]How could it become so powerful so quickly? Shortly after the invasion, Russian tanks are often seen with zeds on them.

[00:26:05]As to where the symbol comes from, that's a mystery to many because the letter does not exist in the cerillic alphabet.

[00:26:14]The special thing about it is that it didn't come from the population at large. You saw it in a theater of war and it only became a symbol for propaganda afterwards when it was clear that this war would not last just 3 days.

[00:26:36]The symbol soon spreads across social media.

[00:26:44]There are many indications that most of those who used the symbol were encouraged to do so by the state and told why don't you do this that would be nice.

[00:26:54]This led to absurd images such as children in a hospice having to line up in a Z shape on an aerial photograph.

[00:27:01]A very perverse interpretation of the symbol which basically symbolizes the murder of Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

[00:27:13]Within no time, you can actually buy fan merchandise adorned [music] with the Zet amongst others. It's distributed by the Russian broadcaster Russia Today across Europe.

[00:27:24]>> Russia Today, >> Russia Today spreads propaganda and its own world view, disinformation, and tries to reach exiled Russians on the one hand, but also to intensify conflicts in Western countries in order to weaken them.

[00:27:42]The propaganda catches on in Germany.

[00:27:46]Hundreds of people show their support for Russian policies in motorcades. In spring 2022, the German government bans the Zed as a propaganda tool shortly after the start of the war.

[00:27:59]Nevertheless, it keeps on surfacing.

[00:28:04]These are traditions that date back to the Tsarist Empire.

[00:28:10]At the end of the 18th century, Katherine the Great wants [music] to expand her territory and conquers Crimea and other parts of Ukraine. Even then, in gratitude, she awards some conquerors, the Order of St. George, the Victorious Grand Mart, the highest honor with a ribbon in the colors orange and black.

[00:28:35]Stalin reinvigorated this tradition [music] in the Second World War and issued a new medal in the same colors.

[00:28:48]>> Originally this ribbon symbolized courage and bravery and fighting for the fatherland. These colors stand for ashes and fire. In other words, for struggle and this meaning, the meaning it used to have was used for medals in the fight against fasism. Fismos.

[00:29:08]>> Today, Crimea is a popular holiday destination. In 2014, it was annexed by Russia once again in violation of international law. That's because it had been part of the territory of sovereign Ukraine since 1954.

[00:29:24]Since the annexation, the orange and black ribbon has made a comeback in Russia.

[00:29:47]>> [music] >> Russian President Vladimir Putin makes the colors his own. Every year on the 9th of [music] May, Russians celebrate the victory over Nazi Germany with a showy military parade in Moscow. and the colors are proudly displayed.

[00:30:02]The zed is now added.

[00:30:08]>> It is of course clever to pick up on the colors of the order of St. George to create a national identity and then use it for this zed.

[00:30:21]>> What the zed actually means appears largely irrelevant.

[00:30:27]It's long been used in military operations.

[00:30:30]The letter stands for the operational area of a military unit.

[00:30:35]>> The tanks that were to roll into eastern Ukraine were marked with the letter Zed.

[00:30:44]The Russian Ministry of Defense soon recognizes the propaganda potential of the military label. On its Instagram page, it claims the zed [music] is an abbreviation for zapido, which means for victory.

[00:30:58]The point is not what it was but what it is. The meanings it's accumulated sits and those meanings are the meaning of the invasion uh the aggression the imperialism of of Russia of course but also the mythologies it's created by the Ukraine invasion particularly the fiction that Ukraine had been taken over by Nazis which is quite odd because to have a Nazi state ruled by a Jew is is quite strange.

[00:31:28]>> [screaming] >> As the propaganda becomes more and more radical, treatment of opponents of the regime worsens.

[00:31:44]In Russia, the doors of activists and journalists are dorbed with the zed.

[00:31:54][music] A member of the band [ __ ] Riot also experiences this. The protest collective is known for its radical acts. In 2012, the musicians perform a protest prayer against the church and state in a cathedral. Three of them are sentenced to prison.

[00:32:16]In their new music video, they compare the Russian zed with the swastika.

[00:32:29]>> [music] >> The comparison of a Zet with a swastika is acceptable in as much as they both stand for a violent horrific regime and for a very inhumane ideology. On the other hand, I always find it difficult to compare national socialism with anything. [music] Whether Russia's population is really united under the banner of the Zed remains unclear, but the symbol is making an impact, and it's unlikely to lose its new meaning anytime soon.

[00:33:04]>> Dude, I have so many.

[00:33:08]>> The 6th of January, 2021, around 2,000 angry Trump supporters stormed the capital building in the US capital, Washington.

[00:33:22]They infiltrate the offices of members of parliament and even the Senate chamber. [cheering] Their goal to help Donald Trump become president again.

[00:33:37]Five people die as a result.

[00:33:40]>> They got 10 people trying to stop us.

[00:33:43]>> It's a diverse mixture of activists who come together to attack democracy.

[00:33:48]violent people. These are Americans.

[00:33:57]>> But many of them have one symbol in common, the Q.

[00:34:02]What does it stand for?

[00:34:06]It all starts with a short piece of text. Users of the predominantly right-wing internet forum 4chan come across a post. It says that Hillary Clinton will soon be arrested. The text is signed Q.

[00:34:21]Many users are thrilled and soon concoct their own theories about the content and authors of the posts. He himself claimed to come from Donald Trump's closest circle.

[00:34:36]What makes KQAnon so interesting as a conspiracy theory is that for the first time one of the powerful is on the side of the people who believe the conspiracy narrative.

[00:34:48]The myth of Q is born. His followers call him Kanon the anonymous Q.

[00:35:02]Time and again Q leaves behind scraps [music] of text. known as Q drops. Often just sentence fragments, confused statements barely comprehensible.

[00:35:11]Nevertheless, they're popular because they're packaged as little puzzles.

[00:35:19]With Q Anon, you have a form of participatory ideology. You make up your own worldview a little bit and then you try and solve the puzzle yourself. You can try and outdo each other. You're suddenly kind of the hero of your own action story.

[00:35:39]>> Followers of Q believe that a pedophile network tortures children in hidden cellers and extracts an elixir called adrenochrome from their blood. Not everyone is equally susceptible to conspiracies of this kind.

[00:35:55]We know that people with a strong need to demonstrate their uniqueness believe more strongly in conspiracies because they think they know what is really going on while the others are the sheep.

[00:36:04]The knee >> is a a movement. Okay. It says think for yourself none of this ain't going to win.

[00:36:18]The movement makes use of a host of symbols and riddles.

[00:36:29]And of course, the QAnon myth is easy to market.

[00:36:33]Even in Germany, the right-wing extremist mail order company QAnon merchandise offers its products. They often feature pop culture references such as the red pill from the Matrix film or the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.

[00:36:57]>> For conspiracy theories to be successful, they always require existing societal narratives that they can build on. That's why pop culture is often used. For people who slip into a world view built on conspiracy ideology, it's a bit like they suddenly see the truth behind reality and that everything is actually completely different.

[00:37:19]The hatred propagated under the banner of Q goes beyond internet bubbles. This makes the movement actively dangerous.

[00:37:26]In Germany, too, >> 400 demonstrators attempt to storm the Rice Tuck building in Berlin in August 2020, including right-wing extremists and people who call themselves Riceberger or citizens of the right.

[00:37:43]Some have close links to QAnon.

[00:37:46]>> Riceberger and Kanon narratives primarily offer people concrete instructions for action. They say they shouldn't be overwhelmed by this evil conspiracy that somehow wants to destroy them. So of course there is a certain amount of danger associated with these people.

[00:38:07]Who's responsible [music] for this dangerous ideology? For the violence and the debt such as during the storming of the capital.

[00:38:15]Who is Q?

[00:38:20]Linguists also looked into this question and used artificial intelligence to analyze posts by Q in 2022 and were actually able to find out who wrote the texts. Ronald Watkins and Paul Ferour, two right-wing conspiracy theorists who met on the internet.

[00:38:41]Not high-ranking US officials. No big conspiracy. [music] Just two men on a computer.

[00:38:55]Q has been silent since 2020, but the ideology behind it is still making mischief.

[00:39:02]The movement has long since become a self-perpetuating phenomenon.

[00:39:06]To this day, Q remains a dangerous symbol of conspiracy theories that often spread anti-semitic hatred.

[00:39:25]In this street in Berlin Meta, a house harbors a dark past.

[00:39:34]In the late summer of 1941, what the Nazis call Jewish stars are mass-produced at Vrasa 16. [music] 1 million in 3 weeks.

[00:39:45]The fabric printing company receives 30,000 rice marks for its services.

[00:39:52]The company still exists under a [music] different name.

[00:39:56]Today, it produces the federal flags that fly from the Rice Tark building.

[00:40:04]In September 1941, an official police decree is issued. From then on, all Germans over the age of six who are defined as Jews by the Nazi regime have to wear what's called the Uden or Jewish star.

[00:40:19]They have to pay for the symbol of their exclusion from the so-called nationalist community themselves.

[00:40:25]10 fenics a piece.

[00:40:34]The community is characterized by the fact that it excludes the foreign, excludes the alien, and a historical attribution is promulgated that the Jews are to blame for everything.

[00:40:53]>> The German governor general in occupied Poland introduces [music] the stigma as early as 1939.

[00:41:01]The markings look different at the beginning, but have the same consequences.

[00:41:06]Jews are marginalized and forced to live in ghettos or [music] so-called Jewish houses. From 1942, a Jewish star next to the name plate marks their homes.

[00:41:30]The Jewish star was used to brand those who did not belong to this construct of the people in a nationalist worldview.

[00:41:38]Jews were branded as those who were actually below the people who were a subcategory.

[00:41:55]A drastic step in a long series of humiliations.

[00:42:12]a relapse into barbarism.

[00:42:27]The Jewish star was not an entirely new invention of the National Socialist.

[00:42:33]Jews have been branded as such for thousands of years.

[00:42:44]In Rome, Pope Innocent III decreed in 1215 that Jews and Muslims must be recognizable through symbols on their clothing.

[00:43:00]He didn't say how they should be distinguished, just that they had to be distinguished. And so the labels or the badges or the ways of marking out the Jews was different in different parts of Europe.

[00:43:16]This could be a colorful patch on the chest or the yellow Jewish hat. Muslims are also marked in Europe at that time.

[00:43:26]Later, Jews mainly had to wear what was called the yellow ring.

[00:43:41]In the Ottoman Empire, Jews and all other non-Muslims are again marginalized.

[00:43:56]In Armenia in the 18th century, for example, Jews are only allowed to wear black shoes. At the time, the huge empire covers around 5 million km.

[00:44:07]Implementation is hard to ensure and is often ignored.

[00:44:17]But the Nazi dictatorship goes much further.

[00:44:22]Identification is followed by the organized mass deportation and murder of 6 million Jews.

[00:44:31]The Jewish star has become a symbol of cruelty and evil perexalos.

[00:44:45]In April 2020, it suddenly becomes visible again.

[00:44:50]In protest against compulsory masks and lockdowns, people take to the streets across Germany with some bizarre results.

[00:45:01]There were conspiracy theorists, esoteric people, and also right-wing extremists who collectively had an alternative idea of the world, who found each other in the digital world and believed things there that they then took to the streets.

[00:45:17]Some even try to compare themselves to the victims of Nazi terror.

[00:45:37]The comparison between people who are unvaccinated and Jews and a national socialism is an incredibly problematic comparison because it relativizes the shah and what happened to Jews under national socialism.

[00:45:52]Yet >> the initiative to label the Jews ostracized in the German right in 1942 came from propaganda minister Ysef Gerbles.

[00:46:01]>> Gerbles thought that the Jews were undermining morale by making comments on transport or in the streets or in cues.

[00:46:11]He also thought that by introducing the star that not only would the Jews be marked out and visible on the streets, but also he believed then that they would have to adhere to restrictions that were imposed upon them.

[00:46:28]>> Two superimposed yellow triangles were used to create the inhuman star. Since the Middle Ages, yellow has symbolized envy, plague, and Jews.

[00:46:39]The letters in the center mock the Hebrew script.

[00:46:44]Initially such markings became compulsory in the concentration camps.

[00:46:52]Here prisoners are categorized from the outset marked by triangles in different colors.

[00:47:04]Jews are assigned yellow triangles.

[00:47:09]The yellow star is an imitation of the Jewish star of David.

[00:47:16]Gubbis said that the people who were labeled as such would then no longer dare to enter the cities and that they would naturally disappear from view.

[00:47:26]What he didn't say was that it would be easier to arrest them, deport them, and then of course kill and destroy them.

[00:47:40]>> The idea came from Reinhardt Hydrri, the perfidious manager of genocide.

[00:47:48]>> It is very important to distinguish between the Jewish star and the star of David. The Jewish star is a racist and anti-semitic symbol used by the National Socialists to brand Jews. It is not Jewish. It is not a Jewish symbol. Just as anti-semitism and the Holocaust are not Jewish, but instead have been imposed on us.

[00:48:11]>> The Jewish star is supposed [music] to mock the Star of David. But what the inventor probably doesn't realize is that [music] the Star of David is not originally a purely Jewish symbol. It was also used to decorate churches and mosques into the Middle Ages.

[00:48:28]The star symbolizes the power of God and is said to protect against demons and fire.

[00:48:38]The symbol also appears time and again among Freemasons, alchemists, and master [music] brewers.

[00:48:46]The brow sten is the guilt symbol for brewers and molsters.

[00:48:51]It still hangs above the entrances of many breweries, especially in southern Germany.

[00:48:58]Its six points symbolize fire, air, and water, hops, and malt.

[00:49:05]In Lindau [music] on Lake Constant, the spikes were unceremoniously sorn off during the Nazi era. Today, however, they can be seen there again.

[00:49:21]The Star of David did not become a symbol of Judaism until the 14th century in Prague.

[00:49:28]At that time, [music] Jews still live there in a ghetto as secondclass citizens.

[00:49:33]Under Emperor [music] Charles IV, their situation improves for a short time.

[00:49:39]He allows them the privilege of having their own [music] flag, red with a golden star in the center. The star becomes a religious symbol and soon also a symbol of suffering.

[00:49:53]When a plague pandemic breaks out, Jews are denounced as [music] the cause and persecuted. Today, the Star of David is a worldwide symbol of Judaism.

[00:50:07]You can find stars of David in Jewish prayer houses on prayer books. The Star of David has actually also become a pop culture symbol. The Star of David is an expression of identity, of Jewish identity.

[00:50:26]The Star of David has successfully outlived the National Socialists attempts to rebrand it as the Jewish Star.

[00:50:35]It contributes perhaps more to Jewish identity today than ever before.

[00:50:50]When ideologues and fanatics invest originally harmless symbols with hate, they can become deadly weapons.

[00:51:02]We're so