A high government official reported that membership in neo-Nazi groups has more than doubled over the past three years. Andreas von Schoeler, State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior, said in a radio interview in Stuttgart that the fact that such a development was possible 35 years after the end of the Nazi regime showed that mistakes have been made in the way West Germany treated its past.
He stated that it was essential that the Nazi period should be discussed more thoroughly in the home and at school. Von Schoeler said that the membership in neo-Nazi organizations rose from 600 in 1976 to 1300 at the beginning of this year.
Meanwhile, it was announced by West Berlin’s Technical University president Juergen Starnick that a center for research into anti-Semitism will open later this year at the university. The center, he said, will focus German-Jewish history.
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