NSFW AF
Edit: specifically asking about highschool kids learning about the symbols, not about WOII in general?
Edit2: as far as I can find online the bans are about the flags and greet. I have been to brocantes in France where they sold SS pins etc so maybe it is not as strict?
The history is not suppressed and very much is taught in school. It's just the public display of the symbols. It sounds like you can acquire them in private, provided you're not actually trying to be a member of the banned organisations.
"membres d'une organisation déclarée criminelle en application de l'article 9 du statut du tribunal militaire international annexé à l'accord de Londres du 8 août 1945" refers to the Nuremberg accords.
But yes Wolfenstein was banned in DE. I did not know it was that strict.
That feels painfully wrong and is quite disgusting.
The problem is that German legislature, jurisdiction and the self-regulating body are... not exactly the definition of agile, more the contrary... it took multiple court jurisdictions to get a final clearance for a f...ing crossed out swastika because some public prosecutors were hellbent on convicting antifas for reproduction of nazi propaganda (yes, for real!).
The fact that most of these people are old white ... who never have played a computer game in their life doesn't exactly help gamers' rights in that area either.
However the reason for the regulation is relevant: This Nazi stuff shouldn't be fun or anything. Playing with it makes it simple to forget that those symbols represent evil mass murder. Also going back to the times where the initial versions of those laws were made: Back then Nazi symbolism was everywhere in the county and the Allies didn't want to allow any Nazi-heroism. Balancing this against "legit" use is tough, especially in context of historic games.
The self-censorship mentioned in the article above is the result of a publisher trying to avoid hitting a law but still selling as much as they can, without really thinking about what they were doing.
The problem with torrents or warez in general is: do you trust them? Or: do you trust someone hasn't taken a virus-free package and embedded a Bitcoin/Monero miner or other malware in there?
Especially as many warez groups distribute keygens or cracks compressed and crypted so that other groups cannot easily reverse engineer the secrets, it's hard to check what's in the package - and many cracks actually trigger virus scanners due to the compression, so people turn off the AV and then get f..d...
I don't know if it's the same Wolfenstein but I was somewhat amused to read, or see on Youtube, recently they renamed Himmler to Hoeller. (Himmel being heaven in German, and Hoelle being hell.)