The leaflet comes after two men's attempt to sue Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern over lockdown laws failed. Photo / File
The leaflet comes after two men's attempt to sue Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern over lockdown laws failed. Photo / File
A "ludicrous" leaflet comparing the Government's lockdown laws to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust has been slammed by the NZ Jewish Council.
Earlier this week a leaflet was attached to a pole in Shirley, Christchurch, telling readers Covid-19 is the "Trojan horse to allow tyranny to take over".
In it, it claims if New Zealanders were to snitch on a person for violating quarantine laws, then they would have "snitched on Anne Frank", a Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis until her death in 1945, in WWII.
The leaflet goes on to remind readers "the Holocaust didn't begin with Jews being put onto trains. The average German had no idea what the future held when the propaganda against Jewish people, and the orders from the government to turn in neighbours, began."
It also suggests Covid-19 is being used as a "power grab" by governments and warns of similarities to the beginning stages of Nazi Germany.
A leaflet found in Christchurch compares New Zealand's lockdown laws to Nazi Germany and the holocaust.
NZ Jewish Council spokesperson Juliet Moses told the Herald while it was important for a free society to discuss the pros and cons of lockdown, the context of the leaflet was damaging and trivialised the atrocities that occurred before and during World War II.
"Comparisons with the Holocaust and Nazi regime should be made sparingly. Making the comparisons often dilutes the importance and power of what actually happened and trivialises it. We risk losing any worth from what we have learned from our past," she said.
"The comparison is ludicrous. We can debate of course whether the lockdown has been too restrictive or not restrictive enough and that debate should happen in an open and free society."
Moses says while some members of society buy in to the comparisons, she says the reasons behind today's social restrictions is to save lives, not take them.
"Most people would recognise the lockdown has been imposed to save the population from sickness, and death and try to minimise the death as much as possible, where as the Nazi regime and the Holocaust was doing the exact opposite. It was targeting sectors of the populations for suffering and death.
"It's legitimate to want to debate the ins and outs of the lockdown. I understand people are feeling somewhat nervous or wary of the temporary suspension of constitutional freedoms, but it has to be seen in context - and this context is completely different to Nazi Germany.
"If they want to raise those issues that's their right to do so but they can do so without invoking the Holocaust. I think, if anything, it's more likely to turn people away from the message they're trying to get across. It's a far-fetched comparison.
The leaflet has since been removed. It is not known how many have been distributed.
The leaflet's existence comes after two men's attempt to sue Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern over lockdown laws failed.
The two men, who are known to each other, argued the alert level 4 lockdown had left them unlawfully detained and is not worth the economic cost compared with the low number of Covid-19 related deaths.
One of the men is serving a home detention sentence which allows him to leave the house between 8am and 5pm.
He told Justice Mary Peters "the whole thing's a joke" and Ardern had no grounds to enact the lockdown.
"I don't want my democratic rights to live in a society taken away on a whim," he said.
The man then compared Ardern to Hitler and the lockdown to the holocaust.
Police have charged more than 4000 people with breaching lockdown restrictions, many in the days before the Prime Minister announced the change next week to alert level 3.
There had been 4452 breaches before Thursday - including 477 prosecutions, 3844 warnings and 131 youth referrals. There had been more than 55,000 reports about potential breaches from the public.
Even during alert level 3, New Zealanders are urged to continue to stay local, maintain their bubbles and adhere to the restrictions around exercise and outdoor activities.
