The Nuremberg City Council has banned an “Auschwitz Congress” planned by the neo-Nazi “Kampfbund Deutscher Soldaten” in that city this weekend. About 800 participants were planning to attend the gathering, whose main object, security police spokesmen say, was to attempt to portray the deaths of millions of prisoners in Auschwitz as a “legend.”
The issue of increasing neo-Nazi activity is to be raised in parliament later this month. Deputy Klaus Immer, representing Bonn’s major government party, the Social Democrats, has submitted questions to the government. Immer asks whether the government is “able and willing” to take legal steps against the publisher of a pamphlet distributed at a recent South German reunion of members of a former SS division.
According to Immer, the pamphlet contained “slanderous” accusations against inmates of Nazi concentration camps as well as “dangerous” attempts to portray the tyranny of the SS in the Third Reich as “harmless.” Immer also asks how the government views the increasing frequency of SS reunions at which the Third Reich is glorified while “democracy, parliamentarianism and constitutional rights are portrayed as morbid and weak.”
Three members of the Hamburg Senate representing different political parties have requested official information on the extent of anti-Semitic activity in Hamburg his year. Noting that “desecration of graves, painting of slogans on walls, and disruption of meetings” are causing “concern” among the population, the Senators asked for details of the motives and ringleaders behind such activities, and what can be done to counteract them.
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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.
