Sir Bob Jones: World class ignorance

Stuff reported on the shock horror allegedly felt by the organisers of a 420 strong stall-holders in a Wellington street festival when it was discovered one particular stall flogging jewellery included a small swastika.

As Stuff correctly pointed out, the swastika was and continues to be a symbol of divinity and spirituality in Indian religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism.

Karl du Fresne: Playing the blame game over "Polish" death camps

Truth can be elusive. Consider the recent furore over the Polish government’s introduction of a law that, according to some critics, will greatly restrict public discussion of Poland’s involvement in the Holocaust during World War Two. The new law prohibits mention of “Polish death camps” – on the face of it, an interference in the right of free speech. Yet it’s hard not to feel sympathy for Poland’s lawmakers.

Auschwitz (or Oswiecim, as it’s properly known in Polish) and other notorious extermination camps – Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek – may have been sited on Polish soil, but they were not put there by Poles. They were built and administered by Nazi Germany, which preferred to conduct its programme of genocide outside its own borders. Perhaps that was the Nazis’ way of pretending their hands were clean.

Karl du Fresne: What will these trials achieve?

Former SS sergeant Reinhold Hanning is on trial in Germany for his involvement in the deaths of 170,000 people at Auschwitz. He is reportedly hard of hearing and in poor health. He is 94.

His trial will be followed by that of Hubert Zafke, who is alleged to have been a paramedic at the same concentration camp. Zafke is 95 and suffers from dementia.

What will these trials achieve? That’s what I ask myself when I read of feeble old men being called to account for things that happened more than 70 years ago.