Germany Persecutes Homeschooling Parents

One of the first acts Adolph Hitler initiated when he gained power in Germany was to create a Ministry of Education that would control all schools, “Practical Homeschooling Magazine” said, and even today German officials are enforcing an anti-homeschooling law.

The European Court of Human Rights Sept. 18 upheld Germany’s right to send parents to prison for educating their children at home, according to a news release from the Alliance Defense Fund.

“Parents should have the final say about the education of their own children,” ADF chief counsel Benjamin Bull said. “German Christian homeschoolers have been criminally prosecuted and jailed for homeschooling as a violation of German law. The decision by the European Court of Human Rights opens the door to continued prosecution and should highlight to Americans the extreme dangers of allowing international law to be authoritative in our own court systems.

“ADF will continue to look for ways to protect Christian homeschooling,” Bull added. “We will fight any attempt by opponents of American homeschoolers to seize upon this opinion and attempt to import it into U.S. courts.”

WorldNetDaily.com reported Sept. 26 that the Home School Legal Defense Association is asking Americans to contact the German embassy in hopes that the country will grant parents there the right to educate their children. The move follows the arrest of a mother in Germany for teaching her 12 kids at home.

HSLDA confirms that at least 40 homeschool families currently are in court proceedings in Germany, facing fines or jail time. Others have fled the nation.

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