Leaflets likening Jews to the devil resulted in New Zealand’s only prosecution for hate speech – but it’s a story most are unaware of. Torika Tokalau reports.
Expensive homes and quiet tree-lined streets – Auckland’s Remuera is a picture-perfect slice of suburbia, but it was also the location of New Zealand’s first and only prosecuted incident of hate speech.
In the late 1970s, members of the Jewish community were targeted in a leaflet drop, condemning their faith and likening them to the devil.
Sociologist and professor, Dr Paul Spoonley, who researches racism in New Zealand, believes it was the moment Kiwis first realised neo-Nazi groups existed in this country.
Holocaust survivor Bob Narev, 84, remembers it quite clearly.
In 1977, 30 years after he moved to New Zealand from Switzerland, Narev was living on the fringes of Remuera with his wife, Freida, also a Holocaust survivor.
Bob Narev, a German-born Holocaust survivor, was living on the edge of Remuera in 1977 when the pamphlets were distributed.
The National Socialist White People’s Party of New Zealand, founded by Durward Colin King-Ansell, printed and distributed 9000 pamphlets to Remuera postboxes, some time in the first four months of the year.
Speak Your Mind