Huge swastika found in Brazilian swimming pool

Police in Brazil have stumbled upon a giant swastika depicted on the floor of a private swimming pool while flying over it in a helicopter during an anti-drugs raid in the southern state of Santa Catarina.

The swastika had been there undetected for 13 years, they later found out, although because it is on private land they will not be able to file any changes against the owner of the house, Brazilian media report.

The owner has not been made public but he told police that he is not publicly promoting Nazi views.

The swastika was found in the town of Pomerode where about 90 percent of the population is of German decent and many people still speak German as their first language.

After the end of the World War II some Nazis managed to escape to Brazil including the Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death, who died there in 1979.

In 1967 Franz Stangl, the former commandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka Nazi extermination camps, was tracked down and arrested in Sao Paulo and taken to Germany where he died in prison in 1971.

Although since the 20th century the swastika has been mostly associated with Nazism, it was long before used as a sacred and auspicious symbol many cultures and religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.