An Israeli journalist and former intelligence agent who infiltrated German neo-Nazi groups for the past five months warned this week that the size and reach of the rightist movement in Germany has been severely underestimated by its government.
Yaron Svoray, a child of Holocaust survivors who posed as a rightward-leaning journalist with high-finance connections, befriended the leaders of several extremist groups and discovered thousands of members previously unacknowledged by the German government.
“I believe that the German government estimate is only a quarter,” Svoray said. “That is, you should take their estimate and multiply by four.”
Svoray cited one group, the Nationalistic Front, which the government says has 130 members.
The group’s leader, Meinholf Schoenborn, challenged Svoray to verify a membership list of 8,600 — any of whom, Schoenborn said, would report immediately to Schoenborn’s office to say “Yes, mein Fuhrer.”
Svoray, 38, said he had traveled to Germany four times since October and visited with neo-Nazi leaders for hours of interviews, dinners and nights out carousing, which included urination on effigies of Jews. He also watched as the skinheads attacked some Cypriot refugees.
“Initially it was one of the most horrific experiences of my life,” Svoray said. “It was revolting. But I actually had to stay and look, the way you do at an accident.”
‘A WINK, A NOD’ FROM POLICE
Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the primary sponsor of Svoray’s investigation, said Svoray’s major discovery was a previously overlooked charismatic neo-Nazi leader named Wolfgang Juchem.
Svoray says that Juchem, who lives near Frankfurt and lectures regularly throughout eastern Germany, claims to have 2,000 financial backers and a network of sympathizers numbering nearly 10,000.
During the investigation Svoray used an Australian passport with the name Ron Furey, which he chose for its resonance with “Fuhrer,” and claimed to write for a right-wing American publication.
The Wiesenthal Center distributed to reporters pictures showing Juchem smiling broadly with his arm around the Israeli Svoray.
Svoray observed that the neo-Nazis had friends in certain German police precincts like Hesse, where Svoray said local neo-Nazi leader Heinz Reisz was told in advance of police raids and often “given a wink, a nod and a goodbye by the police.”
He assessed Juchem, a polished former intelligence official who describes himself as having “put in 30 years of good service to the German nation,” as the likeliest candidate to unify the fragmented movement.
In contrast, he believed the youthful skinhead groups posed less of a threat.
Hier believes it was important to conduct an independent test of the German estimates.
“The government has been late to act in monitoring these groups,” he said.
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