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LEARN HEBREW

Dutch creator of hoax Auschwitz rave sentenced to community service
Updated: 26/May/2006 14:10
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AMSTERDAM (AFP/EJP) --- A student who used images of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz in a hoax publicity video for a techno rave circulated on the internet was sentenced to 40 hours of community service by a Dutch court, the ANP news agency reported Wednesday.

Dickie Thijssen, 23, last year made the clip that purported to give details of a techno music festival called "Housewitz", a reference to techno "house" music.

The magistrate ruled Wednesday that the film was "insulting and offensive"and that the rules of artistic freedom have been infringed.

It used images of the Auschwitz death camp in German-occupied Poland, turning the famous slogan above the main gate "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Shall Set You Free) into "Tanzen Macht Frei" (Dance Shall Set You Free).

The clip also showed images of the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau where 1.1 million people were killed during WWII, mostly European Jews.

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The film said the dance party would take place in The Netherlands on May 4, the day on which the nation commemorates victims of war, but was in any event a hoax since no such party was ever planned or held.

The film was met with outrage by the Dutch justice ministry, the Auschwitz museum and the Polish foreign ministry.

Thijssen told the court that he had never intended for the film -- which he qualified as "very, very, very black humour"-- to be widely circulated on the internet.

When he discovered that it generated immense attention he took it off his website and issued an apology online, but by then the clip was already posted on several other websites in the Netherlands and Poland.

He repeated in court that he was sorry and with hindsight conceded that he had gone too far when he made the film, ANP said.

In August 2005, the Dutch Internet-regulating body decided to bring charges against the site that was putting out the video.

But the weblog geenstijl.nl refused to remove the clip with a so called ‘educational’ argument: “This clip shows how our educational system has failed.”

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