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Germans Resist Neo-nazi Mail, Returning Thousands of Letters

January 23, 1989
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The West German public is resisting a neo-Nazi junk mail campaign in such volume that the post office is now destroying the rejected mailings, instead of returning them.

Millions of citizens were reported last week to have sent back unopened the propaganda material mailed to them by Gerhard Frey of Munich, leader of the German Peoples Union, the largest neo-Nazi group in West Germany.

Frey sent out 28 million letters — at a cost of $1.7 million — urging people to join his party and asking questions about how to deal with “the infiltration of foreigners” into the country.

Recipients in Duesseldorf are returning Frey’s mailings by the hundreds each day, the local post office reported Thursday. In Hamburg, the rate of returns is 1,500 a day.

The postal workers union has advised people to return the unwanted mail without a stamp, marked “acceptance refused.”

The Bonn Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications insists there is no legal way to stop Frey’s junk mail campaign. The ministry said it cannot become a censor and decide which mail should not be delivered.

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