Why is so much effort being spent defending a Nazi symbol?

[cksmithy]

190. I have read and reread this very long thread before responding.

My father was a sailor/radioman (locked in the radio room when battle stations were called, had to rely on someone to let him out) on the USS Yorktown, and barely made it to the rescue ships after it was sunk. I was born in 1951 and my parents had us watch every WW2 documentary made. I watched the pictures on tv of living skeletons being rescued, and dead skeletons being buried, as a 2nd grader. I learned about the swastikas, the iron cross and the ss thunderbolts, but I had no idea of the totenkopf until this post. I grew up in Monterey County, California, but I never had a history class that made it beyond the civil war and reconstruction. I got my BA as an adult and never learned about it during a history classes.

I am glad your 6th grade class taught you so well. (I noticed one of your graphics was from 2019.)

My French Grandmother had a beaded bracelet she bought at a Native American store, after she emigrated to the US in 1920 to marry my grandfather. I remember seeing it in her jewelry box, she said it meant good luck, until the Nazis ruined it. She kept it because to her it was a symbol of her good fortune to become a US citizen.

From what I researched and read Platner got his tattoo in Croatia, where it is a very popular tattoo.

From your graphic there are many other symbols that I had no ideas were Nazi symbols.

I am not defending or saying they are not Nazi symbols, just that I had no idea.