Gunter Deckert, a well-known German neo-Nazi, has been sentenced to prison again – this time for inciting racial discrimination and defaming the memory of Holocaust victims.
Last Friday, Deckert was sentenced in the German town of Weinheim to a prison term of one year and eight months for the publication and circulation of a book that contains anti-Jewish statements he and Holocaust denier David Irving of Britain made at an event they organized.
In April 1995, a court in Karlsruhe sentenced Deckert, the former head of the extreme right-wing National Democratic Party, to prison for two years for his role in the actual incident, during which participants ridiculed the Holocaust, denying the mass murder of Jews.
In a separate case in April of this year, a Mannheim court sentenced Deckert to a month in jail for defamatory statements about Jews.
The prosecution in the case heard in Weinheim demanded a prison term of four years and immediately announced its intent to appeal the sentence.
The defense pleaded for acquittal.
Deckert had to be removed from the court because he repeatedly protested the sentencing, accusing the court of being politically motivated.
Outside the court building, some 20 supporters of Deckert’s demonstrated.
In another development, five left-wing protesters and four police officers were injured and 56 persons arrested at an anti-Nazi demonstration last Friday in Hetendorf.
Some 300 people demonstrated in front of a building in which more than 200 neo- Nazis from various parts of Germany met for a traditional annual party.
Before the party began, police searched for weapons. The searches yielded a few old guns as well as knives and baseball bats.
Hetendorf has become an area for neo-Nazi gatherings in northern Germany, experts have said.
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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.
