either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content A Brazilian history teacher has been forced to cover up a large painted swastika on the bottom of his swimming pool after prosecutors launched an investigation Wandercy Pugliesi's admiration for the Nazis was first exposed back in 2014 when police carried out a search at his Pomerode officers spotted the swastika at the bottom of Pugliesi's outdoor swimming pool A photo from the case shows how the pool, together with its surroundings, resembles the flag of Adolph Hitler's Third Reich terrorized much of Europe during World War II and were responsible for the deaths of more than 6 million Jewish men Pomerode, where the property is located, has been dubbed the "most German city in Brazil," since the majority of its residents are of German descent An estimated 90 percent are fluent in German or East Pomeranian thousands of Nazi officers escaped from Germany and fled overseas police decided not to take any action against Pugliesi for his swimming pool swastika: It was on private property and he could not be accused of personally promoting Nazism But the Brazilian Israelite Confederation complained about the lack of action and denounced Pugliesi prompting the state's public prosecutor to order him to either remove or alter the swastika or face legal action The public prosecution has since confirmed it has closed the case after Pugliesi provided evidence that he altered the design painting the gaps between the swastika's arms It now resembles a square with a cross in the middle Photos still show tiles around the swimming area depicting a row of swastikas Pugliesi once put himself forward as a candidate for Pomerode's council expelled him because of his Nazi swimming pool and his admiration for the Third Reich Authorities found decades ago that Pugliesi's admiration went beyond the symbol in his swimming pool books and T-shirts that were confiscated from his home in the 1990s according to police reports and court documents The documents show that he fought a legal battle to get them back claiming he was not a Nazi apologist — despite naming his son Adolf — and that they were merely for private academic study The court dismissed that explanation and the items were never returned to him This story was provided to Newsweek by Zenger News Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground Newsletters in your inbox See all The new factory, in the Testo Central district, will supply the global market with high-quality screw pumps specially designed for demanding applications. It will also result in expanded production capacity for Netzsch’s other product lines at the company’s existing site in Pomerode. In addition to screw pumps, this also includes peristaltic pumps, rotary lobe pumps and progressing cavity pumps as well as macerator systems. "Thanks to the new Notos multi screw pump plant, we will significantly increase our production capacity in Brazil. Our customers will benefit from even more powerful pumps and shorter delivery times in the future,” says Osvaldo Ferreira, managing director of Netzsch do Brasil. Free access to this content is for qualifying individuals only. Corporate and institutional access requires an appropriate license or subscription. For more information contact institutions@markallengroup.com this particular corner won't be cheering on the hosts during the semi-final I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice On Tuesday afternoon the six football-crazy Müller brothers – Arno, Heinz, Horst, Rubens, Udo and Ralf – will sit down with their wives and children to watch Brazil vs Germany in the World Cup semi-final. They will be wearing football shirts coloured in the black, red and yellow of the German flag. They will be speaking German, drinking beer and cheering on the Fatherland. Yet this Müller family do not live in Germany and do not have German passports. They live more than 6,000 miles away in Pomerode, which prides itself on being the “most German town in Brazil”. “If it’s handball or swimming I support Brazil,” says Ralf, the youngest brother aged 48. “But when it comes to football, it’s Germany 100 per cent.” Pomerode is a town of 28,000 people about 500 miles south-west of Rio de Janeiro, situated in an area that was colonised in the mid-19th century by German immigrants, especially from Pomerania, an area now mostly in Poland. Until the mid-1990s almost everyone spoke German or Pomeranian, a dialect now obsolete in Europe, and there was very little marrying out of the community. With the growth of local industry – metallurgy, textiles and plastics – workers arrived from other parts of Brazil and now between 60 to 70 per cent speak German or Pomeranian. Local state schools are bilingual and the town remains very proud of its German heritage. “Pomerode is a little piece of Germany,” says Ralf. “We have 26 shooting clubs, we have German dinner dances, we listen to German music, there are 200 groups who have their own Stammtisch [regular get-together], we have an annual Pomerfest, and we have coffee with cake every afternoon. Here you can’t escape it. Every day we do something that is German.” “When Brazil play we invite everyone to the clubhouse to watch, but when it is Germany only family are invited,” he says. “When the World Cup started we didn’t want to see Germany v Brazil. For us it would have been better if that was the final.” Ralf says he prefers Germany at football because the German Football Federation is a more serious institution than its Brazilian equivalent. He has none of the sense of national injustice and grief that Neymar is injured and will not play in the game today. “Football is a contact sport. It could have happened to a German, a Nigerian, or whoever. It’s part of the game.” He is sad about one thing, though: “We would prefer to beat a full-strength Brazil.” On the streets of Pomerode during the World Cup, there are as many German shirts and flags as there are Brazilian ones. Many locals will be watching the game on screens in the town’s three bars: Schornstein, Opa Boteco and Curry Wurst. Gilmar Alfredo Borchardt, the manager of Curry Wurst, thinks that the clientele today will be roughly 50-50 between Germany and Brazil supporters. Usually he works wearing a Germany top, but he has decided against putting it on today so as not to offend potential customers. “I have to remain neutral since I am a commercial enterprise, even though I lean towards Germany. It is a more developed culture, everything works better than it does here, and the people are more polite,” he says. Pomerode is the most German town in Brazil, but not the only one with a heavy German influence. The main town in the region, Blumenau, which is 20 miles away, has oompah-bands playing in the streets, is a centre of Brazil’s beer industry and has an annual Oktoberfest that attracts about 500,000 people, the largest in South America. The Oktoberfest is held in the Parque Vila Germanica, the town’s main tourist attraction, which is a convention centre-cum-theme park where the buildings have replica German architecture like steep roofs and spires. The Parque will also be hosting a party for the game today, although Ricardo Stodieck, Blumenau’s secretary of tourism, suspects that most people will be supporting Brazil. Stodieck, however, said that there is a huge affection for Germany in the region. He travelled to Porto Alegre, in the neighbouring state, to see Germany v Algeria in the round of 16 last week. “There were many, many Brazilians wearing Germany shirts,” he says. Brazil is a country of immigrants – with large communities of Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, Lebanese and Japanese, among others. Each of these groups has become Brazilian but perhaps none of them has maintained the traditions of their ancestors as much as the Germans. Many prominent Brazilians have German lineage, such as the supermodel Gisele Bündchen. “What we have here is the most successful example of German immigration in the world,” Stodieck says. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies will be cheering on Germany","description":"Despite being in Brazil Join the news democracyWhere your votes decide the Top 100 Reasons for you to sign up to our newsletter here A TikToker shared their experience exploring a "quaint German town" in Brazil leading to some questions about the town's history from viewers "POV: you found a German town in Brazil where 90% speak German & they have the 2nd largest Oktoberfest," TravelWithJovi wrote in the video Clips of the TikToker eating German sausage and exploring the towns of Blumenau and Pomerode flashed on the screen located in the South Region state of Santa Catarina Blumenau has the world's second-largest Oktoberfest celebration viewers quickly pointed out that the German-influenced towns have a questionable history Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter "She's gotta know right," one commenter wrote. "How fun and random! I’m sure there’s a totally normal and not horrifying reason that so many German people moved to Brazil," another person wrote. "Was this town perhaps founded in the late 1940s?" A commenter added. Many of the comments referred to the history of Nazis fleeing to Brazil after World War II to evade prosecution for war crimes. 📍 #blumenau & #pomerode, an essential day trip if you’re in #florianopolis 🇧🇷! Quaint German town where you can experience #oktoberfest, eat #germansausage, buy #porcelain, go #beertasting, and buy award winning #chocolates! Booked through @Civitatis 🔥 it’s been raining the past week in #floripa, but this was the perfect excursion! Famously, Josef Mengele - a Nazi officer and physician who performed deadly experiments on humans imprisoned at Auschwitz - fled to Brazil after the war. Mengele died in Brazil and was buried in Embu das Artes. His body was eventually exhumed to test for DNA. While many of the German-influenced towns in Brazil were founded before World War II, their reputation remains questionable for people abroad. The Tiktoker did not respond to comments. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. According to Guinness World Records, the largest decorated Easter egg is 16.72m tall and 10.88m in diameter. It was created by Associação Visite Pomerode (Brazil) in Pomerode, Santa Catarina, Brazil, on Feb 18, 2023 for its annual Easter festival.- Guinness World Records THERE are two sides to the Easter celebration. The first side is its religious nature, which involves Christianity, lent and resurrection. The other side, of course, involves a giant bunny hiding colourful chocolate eggs in bushes for kids to find. So many questions, and so few answers. However, one question that we can answer is: "Is the world's largest Easter egg in Brazil?" According to Guinness World Records, the largest decorated Easter egg is 16.72m tall and 10.88m in diameter. It was created by Associação Visite Pomerode (Brazil) in Pomerode, Santa Catarina, Brazil, on Feb 18, 2023 for its annual Easter festival. But don't try taking a bite out of it because it's made from steel – this will ruin your pearly whites a lot faster than consuming copious amounts of chocolate. As for the largest chocolate Easter Egg, that honour goes to the confectionery created by a chocolatier at a shopping centre in Tosca, Italy in 2011. The egg was 10.39m in height, had a circumference of 19.6m at its widest point and weighed a whopping 7,200kg. That may not have been as big as the one in Brazil but I bet it was infinitely tastier. 1) https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-decorated-easter-egg#:~:text=The%20largest%20decorated%20Easter%20egg,of%20Pomerode's%20annual%20Easter%20festival. 2) https://www.asiabookofrecords.com/largest-easter-egg-of-the-world/ 3) https://euroweeklynews.com/2024/02/27/sweet-giants-unwrapping-the-worlds-largest-chocolate-easter-egg/ 4) https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-chocolate-easter-egg 5) https://www.thedailymeal.com/world-s-largest-chocolate-easter-egg/32014/ We would love to keep you posted on the latest promotion. Kindly fill the form below Notifications can be managed in browser preferences. The huge symbol has been in place for 13 years A police helicopter investigating a kidnapping case in Brazil made the bizarre discovery of a huge swastika tiled into the bottom of a swimming pool. Local authorities in Pomerode, in the Santa Catarina region, spotted the symbol on private property while flying overhead. Police said that the pool has had the swastika for 13 years, according to CNN. But officials said that no charges would be filed, as the homeowner - who has not been identified - was not promoting Nazism. The swastika was used by Buddhists, Hindus and Jains as a symbol of 'well-being' for centuries. It was adopted by early Western travellers who went to Asia, and 'brought back' until it was adopted by advertisers and designers - even on products such as Coca Cola and Carlsberg. It was also used by US military units in World War One and on RAF planes in 1939, according to US graphic design writer Steven Heller, who plots its history in his book, The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption? He told the BBC that the swastika was even used by Boy Scouts and the Girls' Club of America who would "send out swastika badges to their young readers as a prize for selling copies of the magazine". But the symbol was later appropriated and used by Hitler and the Nazis until it became synonymous with fascism. It continues to be used as a symbol of anti-Semitism and was banned in Germany at the end of the war. The country even tried - unsuccessfully - to introduce an EU-wide ban in 2007. Pomerode, in the southern state of Santa Catarina, has a long history of European migration, particularly Germans and Austrians. After the Second World War, the Austrian-born SS commandant of the Sobibór and Treblinka extermination camps, Franz Stangl, was tracked down to the Brazilian capital of Sao Paulo, where he was arrested in 1967.