A Jewish doctor in the North Rhine-Westphalian city of Paderborn has reportedly walked out of a surgery after discovering a Nazi tattoo on the arm of a patient.
The 36-year-old man needing an operation was tattooed with the image of the Reichsadler, or Imperial Eagle, perched upon a swastika, daily Bild reported on Friday.
The patient’s 46-year-old doctor said he could not reconcile proceeding with the surgery with his conscience, the paper reported.
“I will not operate on your husband,” the doctor told the man’s wife. “I’m Jewish.”
The doctor then had another physician finish the procedure, Bild reported.
Since the end of World War II the public display of Nazi party symbols, such as the swastika, have been forbidden in Germany, and carries punishment of up to three years in prison. The eagle, which was a German national symbol long before the Third Reich, is now called the Bundesadler.
(Source: The Local)
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32 Responses
good for the DR!
Note the patient’s age – 36!!!
Although I know everyone has their own feelings about it,
this is one of the reasons why, 65 years after the end of WW2, I will still not buy anything from Germany.
Yes, I know there are anti-semites EVERYwhere, and certainly there are some good people in germany, but for me personally, uh-uh, sorry, in the historical scheme of things 65 years is just a blink. Political/ethnic philosophies rarely die just because you lost a war. Get back to me in a hundred years from now and maybe I’ll reconsider.
Pretty impressive.
What will be the consequences for him to bear?
Who knows if this situation hasnt arisen before. We’ve all heard about patients who have had the wrong kidney accidentaly removed etc etc… Would be tempting, no?
Maybe a Rabbi can weigh in with hashkofah on this kind of situation. I totally understand the feelings of the doctor, and share them.
AinOhdMilvado, I thought I was the only one who won’t buy German goods! When my husband rented an Audi, I refused to get in. He changed the rental car.
Kudos to this doctor – a man of conscience, although I wonder why he’s in Germany & not in Israel.
Once again the title is misleading. If anything the man was a neonazi not a nazi. He probably was just a Nazi sympathizer and a jerk.
Good for the Doctor and good for #2. In our family, we also
do not buy anything German and can’t understand how little self-respect many Jews exhibit by buying German products, including cars. This nation killed over 6MILLION OF OUR PEOPLE!!!!!!!!! We have difficulty forgiving family and friends who wrong us in minor ways, yet we should forgive and forget Germany and support them commercially?!?!
OTOH, what to make of doctors in Israel who treat Arabs? Maybe he should have operated on him, then turned him in for the crime he committed as per the last paragraph.
If this was a matter of his having to triage and treat this patient over another, then that might be another story.
BestBubby: Audi is not a German car, it is Swedish.
Buying a GM car is much much worse than BMW. GM was Hitler’s right hand in manufacturing jeeps and air engines for the war, despite the white house dismay….
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5571
http://www.internalcombustionbook.com/archive/offsite/lajj/GMandtheNazisLAJJ.pdf
#10 = Audi is german
Volvo is Swedish.
gevaldikguy…
nazi, neonazi – what’s the difference?
If someone (a german!) goes to the trouble to get a swastika tattoo, that tells you where his head his at, what he would like to do if he could.
Hitler, yemach she’mo, was also a “jerk”.
Jerks can be exceedingly dangerous if not stopped EARLY.
Way to go!!!
You must be thinking of Saab, lawwolf. Audi is German — a subsidiary of Volkswagon…
There was plenty of rishus to go around. And around. So boycotting Mercedes and BMW seems to be simplistic to me.
For example (in addition to automobiles), according to http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/ it was IBM punch-card computer technology that enabled the Nazis ym”sh to do what they did. Every PC made over the past decade or two can be called “IBM-compatible”; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer.
So I wonder why one would boycott a company like Mercedes, (which, in my understanding, gives Israel very favorable pricing on its products, but even without that), while having no problem using the modern PC, which is essentially the descendant of the very machines that allowed the Nazis to commit their massive-scale atrocities.
Regardless, as others said, with all that his country and the world have come to know about the Holocaust perpetrated by his grandparents’ peers, if the guy is 36 years old, and after all of the above, is still a neo-Nazi bigot, then it’s quite understandable how the doctor decided he’d rather someone else do the job.
Why couldn’t he operate, make a mistake, and make this Jew Hater suffer for the rest of his life?
#11 GM made lots of tanks for the us military and the nazi gm connection is controversial. It is not a fact that GM helped the nazis.
#17-because he is not a murderer. Hashem can “N’kom Nikmas Dam Avadecha” without any assistance from Basar V’dam.
#19 – Doing it to a nochri, is not retzicha.
#19 cccr, where did you see me write that I want this Rasha murdered?!? I only said he should suffer for the rest of his life!
Every situation is different. I know someone who had such a tattoo he got in his youth when he was easily influenced into the white pride movement, and he could not be friendlier to me. Yes, unusual, but a true situation.
Also, stop picking on Germans. Dont you know the best Germans were Jewish?
Perspective is key! Dont generalize.
There is no such thing as a “neo” nazi…..
I find this to be an interesting topic. I am not sure why not buying German products seems to be the logical conclusion to not forgiving the Germans. I think that people feel like they are being ‘loyal’ to the Kedoshim and preserving their memory. But really, is that what they died for? Keep Mitzvos better, work on your Middos, do Kiruv (assimilation was a HUGE problem before the Holocaust) and THEN you will not be betraying their memories. Not buying German things just makes you feel like you are doing something.
I say you SHOULD buy german cars; imagine hitl*r ym’s would see a Jew benefitting from his products… There’s no bigger revenge!
#17–Because he would have had to deal with the malpractice lawsuit and made his own life miserable too, while this Nazi would have ended up compensated big time.
Please remove the picture it’s so offensive.
On cars. Audi is German. GM helped the Nazis. Ford was an anti~semite. Toyota is made in Japan which was an axis power. Maybe we should all ride horses. Then again the cossaks rode horses.
Rav Zonnenfeld at the end of the 19th century (around 1897) when the Kaiser of the Austro-Hungrian empire (United Austria, Germany an Hungry) visited Jerusalem was asked If he was going to say the bracha of malchus on the Kaiser he said No! only because he had a tradition way back from The Vilna Goan that Germanya was Amalak. Dont forget that Hitler mach shamo was not German, he was Austrian. The Austrian’s and German’s are from the same genetic genes. Also the English royality were also from the same genetic genes.
The next in line for the english royalty is prince Charles, his kids Prince Williams and Prince Herrey are JEWISH!
Good for the doctor and the neo nazi guy probably had it coming. Though it would have said more if the doctor did operate on him, maybe the neo nazi would have changed his life or maybe people who are bigots would read this and would question why they hate, I don’t know but those are only maybe’s though but we’ll never know.
bestbubby, AinOhdMilvado
Are you two retarded? Every country has done terrible things. America, Spain, Britain, Japan, the list goes on and on. How ignorant can you be? People forget that a lot of those Jews were also German, Hitler lead the German nation to destruction and when looking at the German people as a whole very few had anything to do with the killings. Theres no way Hitler would ever let that get out when he was in power. I’m an American and people in America like to pretend that we’ve never done anything terrible and criticize every other nation for the things they’ve done. We nearly ‘exterminated’ (key word) our entire Native American population to the point where no one knows their history or culture and put them on reservations and I’m not even going to get into about slavery and the hate towards people with African ethnicity that exists even today. So if you live in America stfu about how bad Germany is and look at yourself.
For the folks that don’t buy German products, do you buy IBM or GM by any chance? Opel – the German car and truck maker was a GM subsidiary. The Wehrmacht (the German Army) was equipped with trucks manufactured by a GM subsidiary. IBM was founded by a German national. Before and during WWII, it manufactured some calculating device that was widely used to monitor the “traffic” of millions of mostly Jewish inmates in the concentration camps, a feat that even the Germans wouldn’t have been able to carry out without IBM’s contraptions. Google IBM and the Holocaust for confirmation of the above.