Final-year pupils at Vergina Lyceum in Larnaca posted photographs of themselves performing Nazi salutes inside their school and drawing swastikas on surfaces, sparking calls for the Ministry of Education to intervene.
The pupils have been organising and recruiting others for some time, according to complaints made to philenews from various sources. They created social media accounts to distribute Nazi material, including an Instagram account called “Verginazi”, and draw swastikas on school walls and equipment.
In one photograph, pupils held a sign they had taken from a road behind the school. The sign read “Gaza Children Street”. Activists had placed the sign to protest a tree planting by the Jewish Community of Cyprus, which had initially announced the event would honour Donald Trump for the liberation of Israeli hostages in Gaza. The pupils erased the word “children” from the sign and drew a Nazi symbol on it.
Kostas Kosta, president of the organised parents association in Larnaca district, said similar complaints had reached parents. “We as parents are clear and consider these incidents unthinkable,” he said.
“Anything that refers to the Nazi past and particularly symbols connected to the murder of millions of people, we condemn,” Kostas said, adding that “ideologies of hatred have no place in schools.” He called on the Ministry of Education to address the matter.
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