A public announcement of the formation of a “Canadian Nazi party” by three Canadian neo-Nazis, wearing swastika armbands, was denounced today by the Canadian Jewish Congress as an effort by “young hooligans” trying to “shock the Canadian people.”
The youths were John Beattle, 23, John de Cock, 19, and Peter Reidel, 16. Another announced member of the group, David Stanley, 20, who started dissemination of Nazi materials in the area two years ago, was in Vancouver where he has been busy with Nazi activities for the past two months. Beattle claimed 47 members in Toronto and “thousands of sympathizers.”
The three youths met with press and TV reporters to whom they gave the Nazi salute and announced the Canadian Nazi group as an affiliate of George Rockwell’s Nazis in the United States. They said they had acquired a house in Toronto for party headquarters. Previously the neo-Nazis had confined their labors to surreptitious of anti-Semitic and anti-Negro material.
President Meyer Gasner of the Canadian Jewish Congress in Ontario province said, in a statement: “our reaction to young hooligans who don obscene regalia and attempt to shock the Canadian people is that they are indecently exposing themselves and deserve no more attention than that given to a deluded exhibitionist. As to the alleged formation of an alleged Nazi party in Canada we feel as do all Canadians that there is no room here or indeed anywhere in the free world for a revival of Hitlerite conspiracy. We scorn to dignify these acts with any other comment.”
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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.
