Protests at home and abroad have led the extremist right-wing National Democratic Party to announce an indefinite postponement of a political rally it had announced it would hold at the site of the Dachau death camp. No date had been announced for the rally and observers here suggested that the postponement was a face-saving device and that the Dachau meeting will never take place.
The reputedly neo-Nazi NPD meanwhile came under increasing attack from prominent West German Federal and state officials and trade unionists. Foreign Minister Willy Brandt told a meeting of the women’s section of his Social Democratic Party that the NPD “uses a democratic mask behind which to hide its true Nazi character.” Herr Brandt’s statement contradicted a recent statement attributed to his coalition partner, Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger of the Christian Democratic Union, that the NPD was not neo-Nazi.
Heinz Kuehn, Prime Minister of North Westphalia and a member of the Social Democratic Party presidium, said in an interview that he would describe the NPD as “neo-Nazi.” He asked citizens not to demonstrate at NPD rallies, however, because that would only give the party additional publicity.
Demonstrations at an NPD rally in Frankfurt last month led to violence when party monitors, wearing helmets and gloves, allegedly beat up hecklers and assaulted passers-by. The Government of Hesse announced that it would send a full report of the incident to Federal Interior Minister Ernst Benda and has stated its support of Herr Benda’s efforts to have the NPD banned as anti-democratic. The metal trade workers union of Hesse Rhineland-Pfaltz and the Saarland have agreed to coordinate their campaign against the NPD. The trade unionists will publish and circulate documents among factory workers to “expose the nature of the NPD.”
Several thousand persons took part in a peaceful demonstration against the NPD during a party meeting in Dusseldorf addressed by Adolf von Thadden, the NPD chairman. The demonstrators marched outside the hall carrying slogans demanding action against the party. Inside, Herr von Thadden exhorted an audience of 1,000 to support the party and denounced all the groups opposed to it. He said he was gratified by recent statements allegedly made by Chancellor Kiesinger and other high ranking German politicians that the NPD is not neo-Nazi. The NPD’s entry into the Bundestag after next month’s election will depend on the voters of North Rhine-Westphalia, one of the most populous of West German states, state Prime Minister Kuehn declared today.
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.
