The gantry of a skatepark unveiled in September in Savoie in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne was dismantled at the request of the town hall two days after its inauguration. He was talking about the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Its creators plead the “joke”.
A skatepark gantry reminiscent of that of the Auschwitz concentration camp was dismantled in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, in Savoie, report France 3 and Le Dauphiné Libéré. It was unveiled in September, as shown in photos from the Skatepark de France interprofessional group.
According to the Dauphiné Libéré, the town hall ordered its removal two days after the inauguration. “We resolved the problem as quickly as possible. There is no subject, we cannot take the risk of hurting people,” Philippe Rollet, mayor of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, told France 3. who says he discovered the portico on the day of the inauguration.
Around 1.1 million deportees died in the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp in Poland between 1940 and 1945, including more than a million Jews.
The project manager pleads the “bad taste joke”
The head of the construction project for this skatepark, Jérémy Durand, recognized in a Facebook publication that this gantry was an allusion to those of the concentration camps and pleaded for a diversion coming from “the joke (in bad taste, I grant you that). ) 'Skaten macht frei'”.
He admits that it is “a joke that we should never have made” and apologizes “to the people who were sincerely offended”, however castigating “all the haters and other right-thinking people of Internet”. The construction finally had the inscription “Yachting Club Mauriennais”, the name of the group behind this skatepark.
In his text, Jérémy Durand assures that he did not want to glorify Nazism: “using Nazi iconography does not make you a Nazi, nor does it mean that you are promoting it”.
“Skateboarding makes you free. I don’t see what’s wrong with that,” Thierry Laporte, president of the Skate and Create association in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, also told France 3. participated in the creation of the skatepark.
This was built during a “participatory project”, according to its site, with the help of volunteers. “We know the skateboarding world which is often provocative. But I must say that I have never heard an anti-Semitic remark from (the participants in the project). No one has ever been refused on the construction site,” assured Mayor Philippe Rollet.
