A Mexican couple held a Nazistyle wedding ceremony. Fernando and Josefina married in Tlaxcala, a state near the state capital. The groom entered the church wearing a uniform resembling that of the infamous Nazi SS, the organization that led the extermination of millions of people in the Holocaust.
The woman. he, in turn, reached the church, where the ceremony took place in a converted VW Beetle decorated with a swastika flag.
They chose April 29 to get married in honor of the “anniversary” of the deaths of Adolf Hitler and his expartner Eva Braun, which would take place the next day. The dictator killed himself on April 30, 1945 in his bunker in Berlin.
“If we hadn’t found Mass today, we wouldn’t have gotten married until next year,” said the groom. On the same day, in 2016, the couple had already done the civil registration, reports the Mexican newspaper Milenio.
When they left to record the first record, Fernando wore the same outfit and Josefina put a swastika on her white dress. According to the bridal couple, photos were taken at the time and distributed on the Internet.
2 of 2 Nazi wedding in Mexico caused outrage — Photo: Reproduction/Centro Simon Wiesenthal
Nazi wedding in Mexico caused outrage Photo: Reproduction/Centro Simon Wiesenthal
“We received a lot of criticism, even death threats,” complains Fernando.
He also confirmed that he knows the priest who performed the wedding ceremony late last month.
“When I baptized my two sons, I also came in uniform and he didn’t tell me anything,” he says.
The children were named Reinhard the boy after General Reinhard Heydrich (Obersturmfuhrer of the SS and one of the masterminds of the Holocaust) and Hannah Gertrud the girl after Hanna Reitsch, the female pilot who, according to myth, would have rescued Hitler from a bunker by Gertrud ScholtzKlink, former Chairman of the NSDAP.
“I didn’t know much about the story, but my husband told me about it and I support him because I have a responsible husband,” Josefina said.
“I know that for many people Hitler is a genocide, a symbol of racism and violence. But people judge without having any information or believing in the story of the victors. Hitler was a vegetarian, he led his country out of extreme poverty and gave back to his people the territories lost in World War I. His people loved him. We were led to believe that Hitler was a racist, but he came to greet Jesse Owens (American black athlete) at the 1936 Olympics,” Fernando tried to explain.
Fernando also said he went through several troubles on the street, from spitting in his direction to having a gun pointed and being labeled a Nazi.
“More beautiful than loving an ideal is dying for it,” he says.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization based in Buenos Aires, called on the Mexican government to condemn the couple’s celebration.
“Our institution strongly condemns the distortion and trivialization of the memory of six million fellow Jews in the Holocaust and the contempt for those who deny or distort history,” said Ariel Gelblung, director of Latin America at the Wiesenthal Center.
So far, the Mexican government has not taken a position.