History student arrested for reading SS officer’s memoir on Moscow metro

A Moscow court has arrested history student Vladimir Panin for five days for reading the memoirs of an SS officer while riding the metro.

According to the city’s online legal portal, on the morning of May 6, Panin was holding Peter Neumann’s book “Black March: The Personal Story of an S.S. Man” “in both hands” on the metro. The book’s cover shows a photo of a German soldier wearing a helmet with the SS symbol.

Panin was reportedly arrested at the Chistye Prudy metro station and spent that night at a police station before being taken to the court the following day.

During his trial, Panin argued that he doesn’t subscribe to the ideologies of Nazism or fascism and that he was reading the memoir “as a historical source.” Nonetheless, the judge found him guilty of committing acts aimed at promoting or demonstrating Nazi symbols and ordered that the book be destroyed.