Trump supporter explains what led to 'Heil, Hitler' salute at canceled Chicago rally
Source: Chicago Tribune
A 69-year-old Yorkville woman and her husband are defending her actions after a Tribune photo showed her giving a Nazi salute during an altercation with protesters outside UIC Pavilion Friday night following the ill-fated Donald Trump rally. The photo of Trump supporter Birgitt Peterson went viral on social media this weekend, causing some to wonder about her motivation for making the gesture.
Peterson, who said she emigrated from West Berlin and has been a U.S. citizen since 1982, said the salute came during an argument with protesters and was simply her response to them giving her the Nazi gesture. Her husband, Donald, insisted: "We're not skinheads, we're not Nazis."
"So Birgitt decided to teach them to do it,'' said Donald Peterson, who insisted they were "not Nazis'' and absolutely not supporters or "saluting'' Adolf Hitler.
"I lifted my arms," she said, adding that in German she said, "Hail to the German Reich." A protester who was photographed with Peterson, Michael Joseph Garza, told the Tribune on Saturday he did not believe Peterson was responding to anyone else when she raised her arm in the salute. "I went up to her and said, 'Ma'am, please leave, we have understood you, we have made a (path),'" Garza recalled. "She said, 'Go? Back in my day, this is what we did,' basically, and then she hailed Hitler."
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-birgitt-peterson-trump-rally-met-0313-20160312-story.html http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nazi-saluting-trump-supporter-says-shes-not-a-nazi/ "They said Trump is a second Hitler," she told the Times, recalling that one activist next to her that night had held aloft a photo of the Nazi leader. "I said do you know what that sign stands for? Do you know who Hitler really was?"
"I make the point that they are demonstrating something they had no knowledge about," she said. "If you want to do it right, you do it right. You don't know what you are doing."
It was then that she gestured in a Nazi salute.
