To feel uncomfortable about the Nazi symbols on ds's shirt and arm? (Y11 shirt-signing day)

[GoodyGoodyGumdrops]

Y11s were signing each other's schools shirts today, the last day before Study Leave begins.

There's the expected complement of hearts and cocks-and-balls on ds's shirt. (Surprisingly little swearing.) Also many Stars of David - which I have no issue about, we're Jewish.

But I feel uncomfortable about the many swastikas and the number inked onto his left forearm.

Ds says that he wasn't picked out for the swastikas. Some boys were signing there name with one on everybody's shirt. TBH I don't know whether to believe him.

The swastikas are pure bad taste IMO. But the number on ds's forearm really bugs me.

I don't know what, if anything, to do about it.

I would go absolutely berserk
You poor thing. How revolting.

Graffitiing the loos may be bonding behaviour, wolf-whistling girls may be bonding behaviour, drug-taking behind the bike-shed may be bonding behaviour between teens. Doesn't excuse it. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to influence that behaviour.

Ds has met the sole, surviving member of a whole branch of his family. I have no cousins on that side of my family. Can they relate to that experience? How is mocking that 'bonding'?

Po-faced horror is delightful to them

Make it less delightful then. Explain to them why it's a fucking awful thing to do.

Jesus the things we choose to make excuses for...

have the school gotten back to you OP

I think you should log it with your local police as a hate crime. If your son does not want to go to the school and complain, fine. That is his prerogative. However this is a crime against not just him, and it might help the police in dealing with other crimes against the Jewish community.

WTF?

Report this to the school. At least.

You'd have to hold me back if someone did this to my dd.

The shop my OH gets his tattoos done at does a yearly free/cheap swastika tattoo day - to help destigmatize the swastika
The fuck? I can't think any reason why anyone in Europe/the West would offer or get a swastika tattoo unless they were (neo)nazi.

Some teenage boys find the shock factor funny - drawing swastikas, saying the n word, joking about rape... I would be inclined to believe your son when he says that lots of people got swastikas on their shirts, but the school should have picked up on it and severely punished the perpetrators.

I think that tattoo shop was trying to help society by branding all the knobs who would think that was a good idea. Can you imagine someone choosing to employ someone with a swastika tattoo? No thanks.

I feel uncomfortable about the many swastikas and the number inked onto his left forearm

Unless this is some kind of "test post" (absolutely no offence intended, OP, but there have such a huge number recently, and I seem to fall for them all ) - it's hard to see why you'd write

"uncomfortable". Personally I'd be horrified beyond measure, and I'm not even jewish

Surely the only possible thing to do is arrange to visit the school, find out exactly what they intend to do about this and then don't let it drop until you're absolutely satisfied it's been thoroughly and correctly addressed

If there's any minimising or reluctance - and frankly it wouldn't surprise me - it might be worth asking how they'd approach, for example, anyone daubing KKK on the skin of a black pupil

I think you should log it with your local police as a hate crime

I very, very rarely go along with the constant "report it to the police" thing, but on reflection I think this is an exception

It would be extremely interesting to see if they, too, try to pass this off as a mere "bonding exercise" ...

For those of you querying my choice of words, had this been a deliberate attack on my ds - or on anyone else, for that matter - I would have been steaming. And too right I would have involved the police!

It was the 'jokes between friends' nature that made me feel uncomfortable. I was angry, too, but chose to tone down my feelings when I started the thread. AIBU was a genuinely ne question, not a rhetorical one.

Tell you what does make me angry, though: 'destigmatising' the swastika.

It's helpful to report to the police too, as hate crimes are logged and the Community Security Trust is helped by an accurate reflection of the number of anti-Semitic incidents.

Then all I can say, OP, is that you're a much better person than me. I genuinely can't imagine a scenario where I'd consider this any kind of joke, no matter who it was among, how many people it happened to or anything else

Given the widespread use of the hideous symbol the swastika's become, I can just about accept that the hard of thinking might not have considered the issue properly, but the number??

May I ask if other pupils were given a number too?

That's shocking Op. The fact that your ds's supposed friends think this is a harmless joke is actually more disturbing than if they saw it as a racist slur.

Clutching at straws here, but I have a gay friend who sometimes wears a pink triangle badge. Could the numbers be a reclaiming thing for young Jewish kid?

De stigmatising the swastika is a revolting concept. I would seriously question the motives of someone tattooing them onto people for free.

No reclaiming here, surely.

Not when ds had them imposed on him.

There are some people who voluntarily get tattooed with a camp number. They say it is in memoriam. I say it is revolting.

Puzzled, no. Not as far as he is aware.

I see - so they targeted DS for a number because he's jewish, and then others somehow decided it might be "cool" to have one too? Is it really possible that not one of them realised how utterly inappropriate this was?

It occurs to me that there may be something seriously lacking in the teaching at this particular school, and if you feel able to update us it would be extremely interesting to hear what they intend to do

Apologies, OP - I misunderstood your post at 18.43 and thought you meant others had received numbers after your DS, whereas it now seems they didn't

It just gets worse, doesn't it?

I'm not Jewish and am young enough (and fortunate enough) not to have suffered loss at the hands of any world wars. However, I feel quite strongly that de-stigmatising the swastika is like de-stigmatising the Holocaust itself. It absolutely should be a symbol that makes people shudder. It should be a symbol that people are afraid to bandy about because it is simply a hideous symbol which represents everything that is revolting about humanity. De-stigmatising it isn't needed at all; children should be taught from a young age what it means, what it represents and how revolting it is.

I'd go bezerk if I thought DS1 (11) was using it in that way (or any other way, tbh). I'd also go straight to school so that they could find a way to teach the children exactly what a swastika represents because that level of ignorance is inexcusable.

What the fuck?

The swastika is one thing - it is sometimes seen in non-nazi contexts, as it is older than the nazis (though I think it is the other way round on those? And anyway, you can easily tell), but the number on his arm makes it very clear what the intent was.

It's horrifying. If people want to deal with their survivor guilt by getting one, fair enough, but to do this to a boy as "joke" ...

Here in Germany, I am pretty sure those boys would face severe punishment and perhaps be kicked out of school. (Or, most likely, not have done it, because they'd be aware of how horrible a thing it is to do)

This needs to be raised with the school.

I'm actually quite shocked about this.

I doubt the school will do much with the current Y11s , (except insist they attend school during study leave) but that doesn't mean they can't take steps to educate younger years.

It's totally, totally unacceptable.

Goody - apologies. I read that wrong - sharpied to the skin is horrific and does need to be raised.

I went to Budapest several years ago and there was an old man clearing tables at the restaurant. He had an old tattoo of a number on his arm - he came up to us, telling us not to be sad, he survived. He lived through that and he was comforting us with our fat comfortable lives, having only a sliver of an idea of what he had been through and what he had lost.

Swastikas should never be destigmatised and the person who wrote the number needs to be seriously reeducated.