News Brief

Germany’s Interior Ministry has banned two organizations as “reservoirs of organized Holocaust denial.”

In early morning searches Wednesday of nearly 30 premises across three German states, police confiscated material related to the groups. For now, Collegium Humanum, its member organization Bauernhilfe e.V. and the Association for the Rehabilitation of Those Persecuted for Denying the Holocaust all are illegal, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble announced Wednesday. According to a statement from the ministry, the organizations all break the law that forbids Holocaust denial. They are “reservoirs of organized Holocaust denial whose activities consist of anti-Semitic propaganda and the glorification of the National Socialist dictatorship,” the statement said. The groups had spread their propaganda through the Internet, leaflets and gatherings at a site in Vlotho, in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia. The property had become a meeting place for Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis from across Germany, the statement said. “This ban is aimed at breaking up these activities,” the statement said. It is also illegal to create substitute organizations, the ministry emphasized. Nazis, both young and old, reject democratic values, Schäuble said in the statement. “The state is duty bound to confront them and to seize their resources. Like arsonists, they prepare the ground from which racially motivated violence ultimately grows,” he said.