Dutch group files complaint over party whose founders said Hitler was Jewish

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — A Dutch anti-discrimination group complained to police about a political party whose Muslim founders said Adolf Hitler was Jewish and that homosexuality is a contagious illness.

The Bureau Against Discrimination on Wednesday filed the hate speech complaint against the Free Democracy Party, which was established last week ahead of general parliamentary elections scheduled for March, the De Orkaan news site reported.

The party’s official Facebook page was blocked last month in what the party claims was a response to a post about Jews. The said “Jews are worse than the devil” and accused Jews of helping Hitler reach power in Germany and participating in the murder of other Jews, according to De Orkaan. “Hitler was an Austrian Jew who during World War II killed many Jews, including by gassing them,” the post read.

The post also claimed Jews use the far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders “as a pawn to stir trouble in Holland”and falsely asserted that Wilders is Hitler’s grandson. Jews “run the United States but the stupid Europeans believe they were freed by the Americans” during the war, the text also reads.

On Twitter, the party’s official account asserted in a message that “homosexuality in the Netherlands is a contagious sickness that needs to be URGENTLY treated.” The party also tweeted that the blocking of the Facebook page was due to statements about Jews: “Apparently, freedom of expression is not for foreigners!”

Separately, over the weekend unidentified individuals engraved a swastika on the hood of a car belonging to a Jewish businesswoman from the city of Hilversum east of Amsterdam, the broadcaster RTVNH reported Saturday. The woman, who was not named, said she thought the incident was a case of anti-Semitic vandalism directed at her because of her ethnicity.