The Anti-Defamation League has urged German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to halt the flow of racist and anti-Semitic rock music recordings from Germany to the United States.
It called them the “chief propaganda weapon and most important influence” on the actions of Skinheads and other violence-prone neo-Nazis.
Such groups have been responsible for 13 murders and hundreds of beatings and synagogue desecrations, the ADL said.
It linked them to the recordings after a lengthy investigation which resulted in its special report, “Sounds of Hate: Neo-Nazi Rock Music from Germany.”
In a letter to Kohl made public here last week, ADL National Chairman Melvin Salberg and Abraham Foxman, national director, urged the chancellor to invoke Germany’s law forbidding the production and dissemination of neo-Nazi and racist propaganda.
It cited “hate-filled” discs and tapes manufactured by the German firm Rock-O-Rama, which it described as the largest producer of such recordings in the world.
In reply, Friedrich Bohl, chief of the Chancellor’s Office, said the ADL’s concern about the recordings was “completely shared by the federal government” and judicial inquiries were initiated which have resulted so far in “the confiscation of an entire edition of a record.”
But the ADL maintained that confiscation of one edition of one record “is not enough.”
Its report said recordings with titles such as “Blood and Honor,” “White Rider” and “Backlash,” containing lyrics about “alien cultures, the cultures of Zionist scum” are available in specialty shops in most large cities and by mail order.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
