Taken outside the arena where Donald J. Trump’s appearance had just been canceled on Friday in Chicago, circulated far and wide: A woman in a Donald Trump T-shirt, eyes locked with a protester, her right arm raised skyward, her palm faced down.
It did not take a second glance to understand that she was making a Nazi salute. Many took the photo, published by
The Chicago Tribune, as a sign of the support Trump has engendered from extremists.
Others surmised that it was maybe a Bernie Sanders supporter in disguise.
But in an interview on Saturday from her home in Yorkville, Ill., Birgitt Peterson, 69, who says she was the woman in the photo, explained why she made the salute.
After the rally was canceled, the Petersons found themselves in the middle of a group of protesters, some of whom they described as “rude.”
One was holding a poster with a picture of Adolf Hitler on it.
She said, “If you want to do it right, you do it right.”
That is when she made the Nazi salute — a gesture that is banned in Germany.
Social media on Saturday was inundated with people sharing the photo, as well as the account of Michael Garza, who was the protester in the frame.
Garza, in a Facebook post, said he attempted to help the couple leave as some in the crowd grew hostile.
“I start to clear the path. I walk right up to her and say, ‘Ma’am we have listened to you. We understand this is all a little wild, but we have cleared a path for you to leave.'”
“My right hand was constantly swinging in motion, showing her the path out we made for her,” Garza wrote. “She goes, and I quote, ‘Go? Back in my day, you know what we did.'”
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/03/12/trump-supporter-who-made-nazi-salute-explains-why-she-made-the-gesture/
