The West German Jewish Central Committee warned today of possible “catastrophic developments” in Germany stemming from electoral agreements in Lower Saxony between the Federal Republic’s three major political parties and the extreme right-wing National Democratic Party which is reputedly neo-Nazi.
The agreement will place the NPD candidates on a combined election list with the candidates of the Christian Democratic Union, in at least one area and with the Social Democrats and the Free Democrats in other rural districts in Lower Saxony this month. Although the deal, engineered at the local party level in five districts applies to relatively unimportant provincial elections, it has aroused considerable concern and has caused embarrassment to the national leaders of the two government parties. Some of them spoke a week ago of disciplining the local party members responsible, but no action has been reported so far. The NPD holds seats in seven of West Germany’s II state legislatures and is given a good chance of winning its first seats in the Bundestag. West Germany’s lower house, in next year’s national elections.
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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.
