German prosecutors have launched a probe into a theater’s plans to offer free tickets to a play named after Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” to people willing to don a swastika.

A spokesman from the prosecutor’s office in the southern city of Constance said it had received a number of complaints about the theater’s offer. Under German law, publicly displaying the National Socialist symbol is illegal, with very few exceptions.

Read more: Opinion: Jews face rampant anti-Semitism in Germany, Europe

The theater is offering free admission to those spectators willing to wear an armband with a Nazi swastika, given to them ahead of the performance on April 20, Hitler’s birthday.

Those who pay for a ticket will be asked to wear a Star of David “as a sign of solidarity with the victims of barbarism,” the theater’s operators wrote on their website.

The prosecutors will determine whether the offer falls under freedom of artistic creation.

Read more: Anti-Semitism in Germany: Are immigrants unfairly portrayed in the media?

‘Tasteless’ offer

The offer has created an uproar, with the region’s German-Israeli Society calling it “tasteless.”

The theater has defended the idea, saying it was aimed at showing how easily people can be corrupted. It told German broadcaster SWR that the number of people willing to wear swastika for free tickets was surprising and frightening.

According to the theater, writer-director George Tabori’s take on Hitler’s autobiography “Mein Kampf” is a caricature of the Nazi leader’s early years.

The controversy comes as Germany grapples with a rise of anti-Semitism, especially in schools.

ap/aw (dpa, AFP)

Each evening at 1830 UTC, DW’s editors send out a selection of the day’s hard news and quality feature journalism. You can sign up to receive it directly here.

---

Source: http://www.dw.com/en/german-theater-under-probe-for-promising-free-tickets-to-those-donning-swastika/a-43430096

[Disclaimer]

Israel has a “right” to a homeland alongside the Palestinians, Saudi Arabia’s influential crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, said on Monday in an interview with US magazine The Atlantic.

Asked whether the “Jewish people have a right to a nation-state in at least part of their ancestral homeland,” bin Salman said: “I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land.”

Read more: Israel and Saudi Arabia: New best friends in the Middle East?

Riyadh has sponsored an initiative supporting a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 2002, but Salman is the first senior official to explicitly acknowledge Israel’s right to any territory in the region.

The 32-year-old prince, who is widely seen as Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader and a reformer, added that “we have to have a peace agreement [between Palestinians and Israelis] to assure the stability for everyone.”

Read more: The crown prince and the generation gap

The German Israeli Society welcomed what it described as the “very reasonable position” taken by the Crown Prince. “Israel would, of course, have a strong partner on its side with Saudi Arabia, if indeed this is the overall political view and not only that of the Crown Prince,” society president Hellmut Königshaus told Germany’s Deutschlandfunk radio station. However, Königshaus added a note of caution. “He is just one person, and Saudi society has still not come that far.”

Warming up to each other

Saudi Arabia does not officially recognize Israel and has said any normalization of relations requires Israel to withdraw its claim to Palestinian territory seized during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

But the crown prince’s acknowledgment marks the latest sign that diplomatic ties between Riyadh and Tel Aviv are growing closer amid their common opposition to regional rival Iran.

Saudi Arabia opened its airspace in March for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel and in November an Israeli Cabinet member confirmed speculation of back-channel communication between the two countries when he admitted that he had secret contacts in Riyadh.

Read more: Israel caught between the fronts of Saudi Arabia’s conflict with Iran