The man, named in court documents as Thomas K, and his wife visited the hotel in the village of Gerlos in the Tyrolean Alps last August. After check-in, they noticed two framed pictures on a wall near the hotel’s entrance, hung above a flower arrangement. One showed a young man wearing a uniform with an eagle and swastika badge, the other an older man.
Using a pseudonym, K posted reviews on Booking.com and TripAdvisor about a week after his visit, one in German and one in English, under the subject header: “At the entrance they display a picture of a Nazi grandpa.” [...]
Booking.com, which is based in the Netherlands, deleted the post, but the US-based TripAdvisor declined to comply with the request. Matching the Booking.com booking number to the pseudonymous review, the hotel owner then contacted K and filed a lawsuit against him with a regional court in Innsbruck. [...]
After researching the identity of the two men in the photographs at the German National Archives in Berlin, K was able to prove that both of the men had in fact joined the Nazi party, in 1941 and 1943 respectively. The hotel’s owners said they had not been aware of their relatives’ membership.
No comments:
Post a Comment