Ibo Omari encourages young people to look out for Nazi symbols of hate and paint over them

Horrified at the sight of swastikas scrawled on walls, children’s playgrounds and building sites, a group of graffiti artists in Berlin is transforming the Nazi symbols into colourful artwork such as flowers, cars and animals.

The swastika, which was adopted by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party, is banned in Germany, where right-wing sentiment has risen due to an influx of more than a million migrants in the last two years.

Ibo Omari, who runs a graffiti shop and ‘The Cultural Heirs’ youth club, encourages young people to look out for swastikas in their local area and then creatively paint over them — after getting permission from whoever owns the defaced property.

Taking responsibility

“It was important to spur young people into action and to encourage them to take responsibility so they don’t just ignorantly walk past such symbols of hatred,” Mr. Omari said.

“It offends the whole neighbourhood if someone in our midst paints swastikas in a children’s playground and I take it personally,” the 37-year-old said, adding that they also wanted to show graffiti had nothing to do with racism.

Mr. Omari and ‘The Cultural Heirs’ decided the best way to respond was “with humour and love” so they came up with designs such as rabbits, birds and a Rubik’s Cube to cover swastikas.

Sketching potential designs during a graffiti workshop in Mr. Omari’s shop, 16-year-old Philip Keilholz said he got involved as racism had no place in the cosmopolitan German capital. “When tourists come to Berlin and look at a wall and see a swastika, they’ll think: ‘What’s going on here? There are Nazis everywhere!’ And we don’t want that,” he said.

The group has already transformed around 25 swastikas and their ‘PaintBack’ initiative has been copied by people in other cities including Hamburg, Kiel and Bremen.

Mr. Omari started the project in 2015 when a man came into his shop to get some cans of spray paint to cover a swastika in a park where he had been playing with his son.