The Interior Ministry announced Monday it is considering a ban on neo-Nazi groups that recruit young right-wing extremists to fight on the side of Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf war.
The ministry received a strong protest from the Jewish community last week after a state-owned television channel aired a program which contained scenes of neo-Nazi recruits getting paramilitary training in a wooded area near Frankfurt.
Trainees who were interviewed called the war against Iraq a “Zionist, imperialist plot.”
The Interior Ministry said it would keep the training activities under close surveillance.
Meanwhile, Franz Schoenhuber, the former SS officer who heads the extreme right-wing Republican Party, criticized Germany’s participation in the Gulf war on the side of the U.S.-led coalition. Europe’s interests in the region differ from America’s, he said.
Schoenbuber was re-elected party leader in Augsburg on Sunday, putting him in a stronger position to deal with internal opposition, which managed to oust him briefly last year.
The Munich-based Republican Party, which seemed for a while to pose a serious political threat to the established conservative parties, now has little more than 20,000 members, a decline Schoenhuber promises to reverse.
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.
