A neo-Nazi group which declares itself to be “permeated with the spirit of our Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler,” met in secret session in Hanover on Friday in defiance of a ban by the Ministry of Interior. The group calling itself the Association of German National Socialists, is headed by Wolf-Dieter Eckart, a 29-year-old electronics engineer from Hamburg. He said last week that about 25 persons would attend its founding convention. Eckart said his group supports “the ideals of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich” and wanted to give other Germans “the possibility of working with us for the reconstruction of Germany. We agree with all he (Hitler) did,” Eckart said. “The Jews are an international problem today. They are not our job anymore.” In a related development, an East German court has passed a death sentence on Josef Bloesche, a former SS (elite guard) corporal convicted of the mass shooting of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and rounding up Jews for deportation to the Treblinka death camp during World War II. The sentence was reported by the East German news agency, ADN, According to the agency, Bloesche was assigned to the Gestapo office in the Ghetto and detailed to liquidate Jews, “Polish patriots” and Russian civilians. It said he shot Jewish men, women and children during Ghetto patrols and participated in nine mass executions in which more than 1,000 Jews were killed in 1943.
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.
