Category Archives: Racism and anti-racism

German neo-nazi terrorists on trial

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This video says about itself:

May 6, 2013

The surviving member of a neo-Nazi cell blamed for a series of racist murders that scandalized Germany and shamed its authorities goes on trial on Monday in one of the most anticipated court cases in recent German history.

The chance discovery of the gang, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), which had gone undetected for more than a decade, has forced Germany to acknowledge it has a more militant and dangerous neo-Nazi fringe than previously thought, and exposed staggering intelligence failings.

The trial in Munich will focus on 38-year-old Beate Zschaepe, who is charged with complicity in the murder of eight Turks, a Greek and a policewoman between 2000-2007, as well as two bombings in immigrant areas of Cologne, and 15 bank robberies.

“With its historical, social and political dimensions the NSU trial is one of the most significant of post-war German history,” lawyers for the family of the first victim, flower seller Enver Simsek, said in a statement.

The case has profoundly shaken a country that believed it had learned the lessons of its past, and has reopened an uncomfortable debate about whether Germany must do more to tackle the far-right and lingering racist attitudes.

Four others charged with assisting the NSU will sit with Zschaepe on the bench. …

Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011, wrote to Zschaepe in May 2012, addressing her as “Dear Sister” and urging her to use the trial to spread far-right ideology, according to German media.

By Ulrich Rippert in Germany:

The NSU neo-Nazi gang and the German intelligence service

18 May 2013

Following a one-week break due to procedural issues, the trial of the neo-Nazi terror gang, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), has recommenced at the Higher Regional Court (OLG) in Munich.

On Tuesday, the 35-page indictment was read. The principal defendant, Beate Zschäpe, is accused of complicity in all the crimes committed by the NSU. Together with Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, who allegedly killed themselves to avoid arrest, Zschäpe is accused of playing a leading role in the activities of the neo-Nazi group, which murdered eight Turkish-born individuals, a Greek-born small businessman and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007.

Ralf Wohlleben, a former functionary of the far-right German National Democratic Party (NPD), and Carsten S. are accused of being accessories in the crimes. They are alleged to have provided the gun with which nine of the ten murders were committed. André E. and Holger G. are accused of supporting a terrorist organization.

Months before the trial, debates raged over various procedural issues and the behaviour of the court. Although the case is the largest involving racist murders ever held in Germany and public interest is very large–in addition to the attorney general, about 80 co-plaintiffs from the ranks of the murder victims and their families are involved in the trial–the Higher Regional Court in Munich insisted on carrying out the trial in a small courtroom.

This led to a long dispute over the allocation of the very limited number of seats available to the media. In the first round of accreditation, Turkish media outlets were entirely excluded. Turkish newspapers and politicians protested loudly because eight of the ten murder victims originally came from that country.

The Federal Constitutional Court then ruled that the court was obliged to grant a “reasonable number of seats to representatives of the foreign media, with particular reference to the victims of the indicted offences.” The Munich court then postponed the start of the trial and organized the allocation of places by drawing lots. This again led to disputes because small provincial papers were awarded places while major international news agencies were left outside.

The delay in the start of the trial and the subsequent one-week interruption meant even more stress and inconvenience for the co-plaintiffs and relatives of the murder victims, many of whom had booked vacations and paid for lodgings in order to take part in the trial.

The bureaucratic and, on occasion, provocative actions of the court have been characterized in media reports as “insensitive” and lacking “political instinct” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), but they represent something far more than that. The desperate attempt to ensure a small courtroom is directly connected to a campaign to play down the political importance of the trial and ignore the background to the series of murders, first and foremost, the involvement of German state agencies in far-right terrorism.

Presiding judge Manfred Götzl has stressed on a number of occasions that he wanted to strictly limit the trial to the direct criminal responsibility of the five defendants. The central question of how it was possible for a right-wing terrorist group to carry out its homicidal campaign for years against immigrants under the noses of the police and intelligence agencies is not to be addressed in court.

It has now been confirmed, however, that both federal (BfV) and state (LfV) intelligence agencies, as well as the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) and the Berlin state police (LKA), had placed at least 24 undercover agents in the immediate environment of the NSU.

It is also known that the far-right Thuringian Homeland Security (DBS), from which the NSU emerged in the 1990s, was set up by a German intelligence informant, Tino Brandt, and–according to a report in Der Spiegel –was funded by the Thuringian state intelligence agency to the tune of hundreds of thousands of marks.

When 21-year-old Halit Yozgat was shot dead in an Internet cafe in the city of Kassel in April 2006, an employee of the Hessian intelligence agency was present at the crime scene and–contends the relevant article on Wikipedia–left the cafe just a few seconds after the murder.

The official effort to ignore the role of the German secret service and other state agencies in the NSU case makes clear that the object of the proceeding is to cover up rather than reveal the truth.

Even a cursory examination of the known facts in regard to the origins of the NSU and the details of the murders clearly points toward the close links between the murderers and the German state.

In early 1995, the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) tried to win over Uwe Mundlos as an employee and informer. According to MAD, however, Mundlos turned down its offer. Then, in November 1997, the Thuringia state intelligence agency had both Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt under surveillance as they were buying potential bomb parts.

Two months later the police raided a garage rented by Beate Zschäpe and uncovered a bomb workshop with four functional pipe bombs. Böhnhardt was in the garage at the time of the raid, but was somehow able to leave unhindered.

Later it emerged that the explosives for the pipe bombs, about 1.4 kilograms of TNT, had been provided by Thomas Starke, a former friend of Zschäpe. Starke was an undercover agent of the Berlin State Criminal Investigation Department (LKA).

Under the headline, “NSU explosives supplier was an undercover agent of the Berlin police”, Spiegel Online reported last September that “contact between the LKA and the source S” was apparently very close. Starke later helped the trio (Zschäpe, Mundlos, Böhnhardt) in their search for a safe house in the city of Chemnitz.

It remains unclear whether Zschäpe ever collaborated with the security authorities. In November 2011, Focus Online wrote: “Beate Zschäpe is reported to have indeed worked for the secret service in Thuringia.”

According to a report from the state LKA, Zschäpe provided the authorities with information on the far-right milieu, i.e. had worked as an undercover agent, receiving protection at the time from her employer, Thuringia’s intelligence apparatus. During this period, Zschäpe is alleged to have used no less than five aliases.

The Thuringian secret service deny these reports, admitting that they had been in contact with Zschäpe and considered recruiting her as an agent, but then rejected her due to her instability and drug use.

The situation remains murky, due to the refusal of the intelligence agencies to make available important information. Immediately after learning in November 2011 of the NSU’s series of murders, officials shredded intelligence files in bulk that could have shed light on links between the terrorist cell and the authorities. Throughout this period, there were continual references to ‘mishaps and ‘regrettable mistakes’ committed by ‘unthinking’ clerical officers.

Nevertheless, the illegal behavior of the security agencies is so evident that the president of the federal intelligence agency, Heinz Fromm, and the intelligence chiefs of four state agencies (Thuringia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Berlin) have already been forced to resign.

Despite these facts, no one in political and media circles dares to state the obvious: that the NSU murders took place in the context of close cooperation between the perpetrators and sections of the German intelligence apparatus.

This apparatus either supports or covers up for the far-right milieu because it shares much of its ideology. The revelations so far have already indicated the existence of a state within the state, which is free from any parliamentary control and pursues extreme right-wing and racist goals.

At the same time, such links have a tradition in the German secret service. The entire history of this gigantic agency, which employs thousands of staff and undercover agents operating centrally and in no less than 16 regional offices, is tainted by its right-wing past.

Founded in 1950 by the US and its allies as a tool of the Cold War, the German intelligence agency employed many former members of the Nazi regime and the Gestapo.

When the Konrad Adenauer government (1949-63) took control of the agency from the allies in 1955, it promoted a former leading Nazi to be its new chief. Hubert Schrübbers served the Nazi regime as a member of the SA [the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party] and chief prosecutor for 17 years. According to Wikipedia, Schrübbers then recruited “a large number of former SS [the most notorious Nazi paramilitary outfit, which emerged from the SA] and SD [Nazi intelligence service] members to prominent posts in the agency.”

The first BfV president’s deputy was Ernst Brückner, another former SA man. Brückner was also a member of the Nazi Party and from 1941 the head of the security police in occupied Poland, where the Nazis committed some of their worst war crimes.

These right-wing, racist and profoundly anti-democratic traditions of the German state apparatus, which indicate the close links between the NSU murders and the intelligence agencies, are to be kept secret in the Munich trial. This is the only conclusion that can be drawn from the trial so far.

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Greek nazi MPs shout Heil Hitler

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This is a video from the Greek parliament, with English subtitles, about an MP of the nazi party Golden Dawn being expelled for abuse.

MPs of the Belgian racist party Vlaams Belang celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday in parliament, but not during public sessions. Their Greek Golden Dawn co-thinkers are a bit more open about it …

Dawn of the Greeks blog writes about it:

May 17, 2013

There were angry scenes in parliament on Friday when a deputy speaker moved to expel a Golden Dawn MP from the house for calling other members “goats”, a “gang”, and “sell-outs”. The outburst prompted deputy speaker Yiannis Dragasakis (Syriza) to propose a motion of censure against the MP, Panayiotis Iliopoulos, and to ask house officials to remove him from the chamber.

But Iliopoulos’ Golden Dawn colleagues pre-empted his expulsion by walking out on the proceedings. It would have been the first time that a Golden Dawn MP was physically ejected from the chamber. According to reports, the head of Golden Dawn’s parliamentary group, Christos Pappas, shouted “Heil Hitler” three times as he left the chamber. The incident occurred during a discussion on the hate speech bill which is expected to be tabled in parliament in the coming days.

Panagiotis Iliopoulos, Golden Dawn MP, in a photo that exposes his tattoo of the Nazi salute 'Sieg Heil'

Panagiotis Iliopoulos, the Golden Dawn MP who caused today’s incident, in a photo that exposes his tattoo of the Nazi salute ‘Sieg Heil‘. Click on the photo for more detail.

The Muslim Association of Greece says they received a threatening note giving all Muslims one month to leave the country or be ‘slaughtered like chickens’. The letter, as it appeared on the association’s webpage, has the Golden Dawn emblem printed on it: here.

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Syrian war refugee attacked by Greek nazis

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Syrian refugees flee from terrible war. They flee, to, eg, Greece. They may fear governmental violence. Or they may fear the violence of cannibalistic fake ‘freedom fighters’, financed by the CIA, and/or the emir of Qatar, or one of the torturing princes and princesses of the kingdom of Bahrain.

And then, in Greece, comes the violence of Golden Dawn. Holocaust-denying, Hitler songs singing nazis, with their violence against Afghan refugee teenagers, against twelve-year-old girls, against Leftist women, etc. etc.

This video from Canada says about itself:

Golden Dawn Neo Nazi Scum Coming To A Country Near You

Nov 15, 2012

So many people supporting the Golden Dawn neo nazis from countries far and wide. I guess there are retards in every country that go around supporting people that only talk about juntas and idolizing right-wing dictators like the Golden Dawn party

From I Can’t Relax in Greece blog:

He got beaten in Attica Square because he said he is from Syria

16/05/2013

Before the shock from the racist attack against the 14-year-old Afghan subsided, a new racist attack was recorded. It took place … Tuesday and the victim this time was a 20-year-old Syrian in Attica Square.

According to Médecins du Monde, the young man was attacked as he was exiting the underground station of Attica Square. He was approached by five men dressed in black, they asked him where he is from and then beat him violently.

After the attack the 20-year-old was taken by some compatriots of his to the surgery of ‘Doctors of the world’ [Médecins du Monde] at Koumoundourou Square to receive first aid treatment.

…

[Translated from 'Ethnos' newspaper, 15/05/2013, found online at: http://www.ethnos.gr/article.asp?catid=22768&subid=2&pubid=63827983]

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Auschwitz nazi arrested in Germany

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This video is called A Walk Through Auschwitz I Concentration Camp.

By Elisabeth Zimmermann in Germany:

Former guard in Nazi concentration camp arrested in Germany

15 May 2013

At the start of May, 93-year-old Hans Lipschis was arrested in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. Lipschis is a former guard at the Nazi extermination camp in Auschwitz who lived virtually undisturbed for decades after the Second World War in Germany, and then in the US between 1956 and 1983.

His name was recently fourth on the list of the top 10 most wanted Nazi war criminals of the Simon Wiesenthal centre. Born Antanas Lipsys in Lithuania in 1919, he worked as a guard at Auschwitz between 1941 and the beginning of 1945. In this function he was instrumental in the murders of thousands of overwhelmingly Jewish prisoners. The state prosecutor in Stuttgart released this information as the reason for the arrest.

Antanas Lipsys joined the SS in 1941 and became a member of the sixth company of the SS-Totenkopf Sturmbann (death head unit). He was granted German citizenship in 1943 under the name Hans Lipschis. The main task of the “death head units” was the supervision and administration of the concentration camps. They were responsible for the smooth running of the Nazi regime’s mass extermination machine.

As with tens of thousands of Nazi henchmen and collaborators, Lipschis was able to cover up his crimes in the SS and live at first undisturbed in the German Federal Republic after the war. In 1956, he emigrated with his wife and two children to the US. When his previous activities as a guard in a concentration camp were uncovered, he was deported in 1983. Since then, he has lived untroubled by the German authorities in Baden-Württemberg.

The background to the arrest of Lipschis was the trial of a former guard in the Sobibor concentration camp, John Demjanjuk. Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years imprisonment two years ago by a Munich court for accessory to murder in the case of more than 28,000 Jews in occupied Poland.

The conviction of Demjanjuk, whose appeal was never heard by the constitutional court due to his death, has created a new basis for the pursuit of former Nazi war criminals, according to investigators.

After a protracted trial, the judge in the Demjanjuk case came to the conclusion that it was sufficient to prove the presence of an accused in a concentration camp to convict him of accessory to murder. Every SS member and guard in a concentration camp was part of the “machinery of murder”, and such camps had been established and existed for no other purpose.

After the conviction of Demjanjuk in 2011, investigators at the Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes in Ludwigsburg undertook a new review of files in order to track down more former guards in the concentration camps. According to initial reports, there could be up to 50 such people still alive.

The fact that many who were active in the crimes of the Nazis continue to live in Germany undisturbed seven decades after the liberation of the concentration camps underscores once again how the political and legal authorities systematically prevented the persecution of those collaborating in Nazi atrocities.

Relatively few of the thousands of Nazi war crimes have been dealt with in the courts. Since the end of the war, German authorities have investigated more than 100,000 cases, but only 6,500 guilty individuals have been convicted. And those convicted have received comparatively lenient sentences for the monstrous actions they committed. Those accused usually justified their activities by arguing they were “acting under orders in exceptional circumstances”—a line of argument that the courts were prepared to accept.

In this context, it is a scandal that other SS crimes, like the massacre in Sant’ Anna di Stazzema on August 12, 1944, which claimed the lives of 560 Italian women, men and children, remain unpunished.

The state prosecutor in Stuttgart announced on October 1, 2012, that it would not be initiating charges against any of those who participated in the massacre who are still alive, and that the decade-long investigation would cease. The reason given was that it had been impossible to prove that those accused had committed acts that had not yet “passed the statute of limitations”.

In the meantime, the association for the victims of Sant’ Anna have lodged an appeal with the state prosecutor. The appeal included a report by the Cologne-based historian Carlo Gentile, who is one of the most renowned academics with knowledge of the material surrounding the massacre. This was reported in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on April 15.

The state prosecutor had failed “absolutely” to consider important documents and statements from witnesses, wrote Gentile, and had made “clear mistakes regarding the historical data”. In their assessment of the massacre, they had “paid too little attention to the topography of the location and the time period involved”.

Above all, the massacre at Sant’ Anna could not be viewed as an “isolated episode”. The SS had left a bloody trail through Italy in 1944. Considering the number of massacres of civilians, all the available evidence pointed to a planned and well-organised war crime.

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Anti-racism and British students

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This video from Britain says about itself:

An interview with Stephen Lawrence’s mother Doreen Lawrence

Dec 19, 2012

Doreen Lawrence has had a memorable year. Her 2012 began with the conviction of two of her son’s killers in January. In the summer she led out the Olympic flag and the year ends with her making plans to mark the 20th anniversary of her son’s death. She talks to Hugh Muir about her efforts to keep the Stephen Lawrence trust going and to maintain pressure to convict the other men involved in his murder.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

NUS leaders condemned for blocking anti-racism motion

Friday 10 May 2013

by Our News Desk

Anti-racists slammed National Union of Students leaders today for rejecting proposals to fight discrimination and fascism.

The NUS’s executive council shot down a motion calling on it to “actively challenge racism, Islamophobia, anti-semitism and fascism” in an eight to 11 vote on Thursday.

If passed, the motion would have committed the union to a massive student voter registration drive in a bid to unseat fascist Euro MPs Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons.

NUS president Liam Burns was among those who opposed the motion, as it mandated the union to work with Unite Against Facism (UAF).

Opponents cited the involvement of the Socialist Workers Party, which is currently embroiled in a rape scandal.

But black students officer Aaron Kiely labelled the decision “absurd” in the week that “Ukip make a breakthrough in the local elections and the government announces a new immigration Bill aimed at ramping up racist scapegoating.”

Mr Kiely, who proposed the motion, said the fact that Doreen Lawrence, mother of racist-murder victim Stephen, is honorary president of UAF should have given NUS members confidence to work with the organisation.

Labour MP Diane Abbott said: “I completely condemn the rape scandal that has tainted the SWP leadership.

“But I am still in general support of the good anti-racist work of the UAF.”

And UAF national secretary Sabby Dhalu told the Morning Star she was “deeply concerned” about the vote when “students and young people face some of the most violent manifestations of racism.

“With the far-right increasingly targeting campuses, and with this being the 20th anniversary of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, this vote sends the wrong signal.”

Britain’s Queen’s speech: Anti-immigrant rhetoric in support of austerity: here.

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Nazi terrorism trial in Germany

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This is a video about a demonstration in Munich, Germany, in April 2013, against nazi terrorism.

By Peter Schwarz in Germany:

Trial of neo-Nazi terrorist group begins in Munich

8 May 2013

The so-called NSU trial began on Monday at the Higher Regional Court (OLG) in Munich. The principal defendant, 38-year-old Beate Zschäpe, stands accused of forming the National Socialist Underground (NSU) together with Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos. She faces allegations of complicity in 10 murders and of particularly hazardous arson and attempted murder.

The trio, who lived for 13 years under false identities under the eyes of the German security agencies, are believed to have committed 10 murders, two bomb attacks and numerous bank robberies. Except for a female police officer, those murdered were exclusively immigrants who died as a result of racially motivated attacks.

Zschäpe herself has not been charged in any of the fatal shootings. But she is accused of sharing responsibility for all the NSU crimes due to her membership in the organisation. Following the death of Böhnhardt and Mundlos, who allegedly killed themselves after they were discovered by the police, she also set the trio’s flat on fire, seriously endangering the life of a neighbour.

Four men are on the dock along with Zschäpe.

The neo-Nazi and long-serving Thuringia National Democratic Party (the extreme right-wing NPD) functionary Ralf Wohlleben is indicted for aiding and abetting murder. He is said to have helped the NSU after it went underground and procured the weapon that was used in most of the murders. Wohlleben, like Zschäpe, has been remanded in custody.

Carsten S. is also accused of complicity in murder for passing the murder weapon on to the trio. The 33-year-old is alleged to have renounced neo-Nazi involvement years ago. He has made a formal confession of his role in the events.

André E. is answerable to abetting a robbery and a bomb attack. He and his wife, Susanne, are said to have been close friends with the NSU trio up until their detection.

Holger G. is believed to have helped the NSU procure identity documents and another weapon. Like Carsten S., he has submitted a detailed confession.

In addition to the federal prosecutor, approximately 80 plaintiffs—who are either associates of the murder victims or members of their families—are involved in the NSU proceedings. Seven of the attorneys of these plaintiffs gave a press conference in Munich last Sunday. They made it clear that they expect the proceedings to uncover the background to the NSU and its operations. According to a joint statement from the attorneys, it is very difficult to imagine that the NSU had consisted of only three dangerous right-wing extremists.

“It is not our aim to achieve maximum punishment for the accused in the shortest possible time. What we are most interested in achieving is the broadest possible clarification of how these crimes eventuated”, said attorney Angelika Lex, counsel for the widow of Theodore [Theodoros] Boulgarides, who was murdered in Munich on June 15, 2005.

Lex stressed that her client wanted to know how her husband came to be selected and spied upon, and why he became a victim of the NSU. She also wanted to know what networks in contact with the killers were able to aid them and what the authorities knew about the murder.

Representing the daughter of Mehmet Kubasik, who was murdered in Dortmund, attorney Sebastian Scharmer said: “We are not concerned about securing a conviction of the five defendants as soon as possible. We intend making the failure of the state an issue in this trial”.

Scharmer is convinced that the NSU consisted of more than 100 people, among whom were undercover agents from the secret service. He wants to clarify why the three members of the NSU—who were known to the authorities—had not been arrested in 1998, who financed the NSU, and what role undercover agents played in the gang’s crimes.

“Since neither the investigating authorities nor any of the parliamentary inquiry committees have been able to fully explain the circumstances surrounding the offences, we will now endeavour to pursue this task”, Scharmer said. He criticised the federal prosecutor for excluding from the indictment any reference at all to the failure of the state investigative bodies.

Attorney Alexander Kienzle, representing the family of Halit Yozgat, who was murdered on April 6, 2006, said in an interview with the taz newspaper that the family expects that “in transparent constitutional proceedings the involvement and knowledge of state authorities will be clarified”.

He said the family members themselves had become the subject of an investigation immediately after the deed and were required to offer investigators transparency into the most private areas of their lives. “They now expect this transparency to be mirrored by that of the intelligence agencies and police authorities”, added Kienzle.

The Munich OLG and the office of the federal prosecution have made clear that they are not willing to meet the plaintiffs’ expectations of a comprehensive clearing up of the case. They will try to restrict proceedings to inquiry into the immediate circumstances surrounding the events and focus exclusively on the defendants.

Court president Karl Huber said the court would not be another inquiry committee. It would concentrate on “the core task”—i.e., it would “conduct proper criminal proceedings, that could not be challenged in an appeal court, and verify if the defendants were guilty according to criminal law”.

In advance of the proceedings, presiding judge Manfred Götzl had pointedly displayed his contempt for the concerns of victims and the public interest in the trial. Only 50 media representatives were allowed to attend the much too small courtroom, and these failed to include a single member of the Turkish media, although 8 of the 10 murder victims were of Turkish origin.

Only after a ruling by the Supreme Court did the Munich OLG reassign seating for the media—this time, through a lottery excluding major national media bodies that could have delegated legally trained journalists.

The federal prosecutor is planning a monumental trial lasting more than two years. It has compiled 600 folders with 280,000 pages of investigation files and will summon 600 witnesses. The indictment alone consists of 488 pages. But much of this detail—such as the brand of shampoo used by Zschäpe—is largely irrelevant to an assessment of the murders. The background to the crimes, however, remains in the dark.

At the press conference, the co-plaintiffs’ attorneys were confident they will be able to penetrate the obstructive stance of the federal prosecutor and the court.

Attorney Scharmer explained that they were intent on finding out more than what was mentioned in the indictment, and on making the background of the NSU a subject of the proceedings. “These questions cannot be suppressed. And we will ask them”, he said.

Representing the children of Enver Simsek, who was murdered in Nuremberg, attorney Stephen Lucas added that the plaintiffs had not only been victims of the murder of their family members; they were also victims of misguided official investigations, where “negligence or intent may well have played a role”.

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Racism in Hungarian history and today

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This video is called Jews alarmed at racism by members of the right-wing Jobbik party.

From the Remarks by Amb. Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, delivered at the opening dinner of the WJC Plenary Assembly. Budapest, 5 May 2013:

My own mother’s parents were born here. The Lauder family dates back to the 13th Century, so you see my connection to Hungary is both deep and personal. But sadly, all of the famous Jews I mention – and there are many more – noble laureates, artists and scholars – all left Hungary because they were forced to leave.

The rise of anti-Semitic parties in the 1920s and the 1930s led to the darkest chapter of all – the deportation and gassing of more than 400,000 Jewish men, women and children. A staggering one-third of the 1.1 million Jews murdered at Auschwitz were Hungarian.

It is so clear that if these dark forces of anti-Semitism had not been allowed to rise in the 20th century – not just Jews but all Hungarians would have prospered.

This always strikes me as so obvious – when Jews are allowed to live their lives freely and practice their religion, countries always flourish. It is obvious. But all too often, the irrational hatred that is Anti-Semitism defeats common sense.

After 1920, the government of Admiral Miklós Horthy – a vicious anti-Semite – moved Hungary towards this irrational hatred. His government passed successive anti-Jewish laws and aligned itself closely with the Nazis in Germany. And in 1938, the Horthy regime enacted its version of the infamous Nuremberg Laws. The first deportations of Jews from Hungary to concentration camps began in 1941, on Admiral Horthy’s watch.

I am recalling these facts now not because we are not familiar with them, but because today we are seeing, once again, growing ignorance, growing intolerance, growing hatred. Once again we see the outrage of anti-Semitism.

This is by no means only in Hungary, but also in other places in Europe – in Greece, in Ukraine and elsewhere. We see that Jews and other minorities are singled out, vilified, demonized.

We see that more and more people openly deny the Holocaust, which happens to be one of the most well documented tragedies in history.

We see that a growing number of people actually believe the old canard that Jews control world finance, or the media, or everything.

And we see that Jews again are being blamed for economic troubles.

Today, there are members of the Hungarian Parliament who want the government to draw up “Lists of Jews” who hold public office. That sends out warning signals around the world.

In the press and on television, anti-Semitism and incitement against the Roma minority are becoming commonplace, even accepted. We were shocked to learn that an anti-Semitic TV presenter was awarded a prize.

We acknowledge of course that the prize was withdrawn. But the fact that it was awarded in the first place is the kind of thing that has us worried.

And there is this journalist, Zsolt Bayer, who recently called Gypsies “cowardly, repulsive, noxious animals.” He said they were “unfit to live among people” and called for “dealing with them immediately.”

Such words are reminiscent of the darkest era in European history. Let us never forget the Roma were also victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

Today, Jews are again wondering whether they will have to leave the country, for similar reasons.

Perhaps because they wonder why anti-Semites like Miklós Horthy are being glorified, and why statues honoring them are unveiled by Hungarian officials? Perhaps because they wonder if Jews have a future in Hungary?

Whatever the reason, their concerns must be taken seriously.

When Hungarian Jews are attacked by fanatics, they should be able to count on the unequivocal support of their government and of their authorities. It is the authorities that must stop this before it even begins. …

It is no secret that Hungary’s international reputation has suffered in recent years. But Hungary’s good name was not smeared by the foreign press, but by extremists.

Mr. Prime Minister, we are especially concerned about one particular party.

I am talking about Jobbik, a party that won almost 17 percent of the vote in the 2010 elections. Through its anti-Semitism, its hostility to the Roma, and its paranoid rantings at the outside world, Jobbik is dragging the good name of Hungary through the mud.

That same party held a demonstration just yesterday against our gathering here in Budapest. You have made many pronouncements. And your words are very important.

Hungarian Jews need you to take a firm and decisive lead. They need you to take on these dark forces. They need you to be pro-active.They need your leadership in this fight.

They need you to send the message to the entire population that intolerance will not be tolerated.

And yes, that message must be repeated … and then repeated again. As president of the World Jewish Congress, I ask you to do precisely that and thus to demonstrate this great country’s finest traditions. It is time for strong leadership and even stronger actions. We truly hope that you will be successful.

Fascism and intolerance always single out the Jews first. But they are never the last victims. All good people suffer. Countries suffer. In the end, this hatred and intolerance only destroys a nation’s hopes, its progress and its future.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban failed to impress an international assembly of Jews at the weekend who said he had not done enough to confront the country’s largest far-right party: here.

Report says Greece could ban anti-Semitic Golden Dawn party: here.

New raid of neonazis at the General hospital of Nikea (Athens) today: here.

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German nazi terrorism update

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This video says about itself:

Germany’s Neo-Nazi Killers

16 April 2013

The murder trial of Beate Zschäpe is a media spectacle in Germany. Beginning on April 17th, prosecutors will seek to prove her complicity in the murders of 10 people as part of a right wing extremist group calling itself the National Socialist Underground..the NSU.

Since her arrest, additional video recordings and interviews have been uncovered, allowing a deeper look inside the terror cell. It shows how easily Zschäpe and her accomplices, Uwe Böhnhardt und Uwe Mundlos evaded law enforcement as they went about their racist murder spree. German authorities failed in their investigations as law enforcement officials ruled out extreme right wing motives. It was a decision that cost many lives.

By Sven Heymann in Germany:

Latest disclosures link German state with neo-Nazi terrorists

1 May 2013

In recent weeks, numerous details have come to light, indicating close connections between German government bodies and the neo-Nazi terrorist network, the National Socialist Underground (NSU). The revelations confirm that state authorities and security services were directly in touch with persons closely associated with the NSU terrorists. It has also become clear that these state bodies are continuing their attempt to hinder and sabotage a full understanding of the background to the series of murder.

Many of the new allegations relate to the period immediately before January 1998, when the three suspected terrorists—Beate Zschäpe, Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos—went into hiding. The three NSU members now stand accused of 10 acts of murder.

Prior to the disappearance of the three terrorists, several government agencies had numerous opportunities to arrest Uwe Böhnhardt. The failure to arrest him shows that the authorities were apparently not interested in taking the neo-Nazis into custody.

According to the Frankfurter Rundschau, Böhnhardt was sentenced on October 16, 1997, to two years and three months incarceration for sedition and other offences. The verdict did not become final until December 10 of that year. Long-serving Berlin juvenile magistrate Helmut Frenzel complained to the Frankfurter Rundschau that this was followed by seven weeks, during which the then 20-year-old Böhnhardt was neither summoned to serve his sentence nor placed under arrest. On January 26, 1998, he finally dropped out of police surveillance while they were foraging through the trio’s bomb workshop.

However, Judge Frenzel criticises not only the Thuringia state judiciary’s negligent handling of the condemned Böhnhardt, who—he alleges—could have been arrested “before Christmas 1997”. In Frenzel’s view, the police had deliberately delayed the arrest. The emergence of the NSU could thus have been easily prevented.

But there are other points indicating that Uwe Böhnhardt was deliberately placed undercover and allowed to run free. Such a suspicion arises primarily from the operations of the state of Thuringia’s secret service department (LfV).

As the Frankfurter Rundschau reported in another article, the Thuringia criminal detection department (LKA) put Böhnhardt under observation in October 1997, after unknown persons had planted several dummy bombs in the town of Jena. But the LKA had to end their surveillance after three days, according to the testimony of several police officers to the Thuringia committee of inquiry.

Instead of the LKA, the secret service department was then tasked with the surveillance—something “uniquely exceptional”, said the officers. They claim they are still unaware of the reasons for the move. They also state that, during their surveillance, they had the impression they were not the only ones monitoring Böhnhardt. One officer testified: “We realised that someone else was already on to Böhnhardt. But we still don’t know who that was”.

It is also remarkable that the LfV secret service agents needed only two days to find the bomb workshop—and then let six weeks pass before informing the LKA about it. According to an earlier statement by former Thuringia LfV President Helmut Roewer, his office had been notified “by a human source” that the right-wing milieu was busily engaged in plotting with explosives. So there was probably another informant, whose existence and identity are so far unknown to the public.

As observed by television current affairs programme Die Story im Ersten, the investigation of the bomb workshop on January 26, 1998, did not result in any arrest warrants for the trio. Böhnhardt’s car, in which he was able to flee without hindrance, was also not searched. Moreover, it is striking that the police officers, who were dealing with the case until then, were not required to participate in the action undertaken on that day.

Mario Melzer, the leading detective involved in the case and determined to conduct a rigorous pursuit of the trio at the time, was subsequently transferred to another post. Since his testimony to the committees of inquiry in Erfurt and Berlin in 2012, he has been prohibited from receiving any further official information from the current leadership of the Thuringia LKA. Apparently, that authority still has important things to hide.

The TV programme suggested that the LfV wanted to protect its undercover agent, Tino Brandt, after the trio went into hiding. Whether this was the only reason for allowing the trio to remain free is currently unclear. It appears at least from the televised report that the federal criminal detection department (BKA) was aware of the official practice of covering up for secret service agents, even when involved in serious crimes.

The apparent sabotage of the investigation, which the responsible authorities in Thuringia are continuing to this day, is not a one-off affair. Elsewhere, state institutions are thwarting attempts to get to the bottom of the near decade-long series of murders and their connections to the state apparatus.

A few weeks ago, the state of Brandenburg’s LfV was forced to admit to having improperly passed on crucial facts about the NSU trio’s social environment to other state offices. In 1998, Brandenburg undercover agent “Piato” is said to have reported that three neo-Nazis in hiding were planning to obtain guns, commit robberies, gain access to passports, and then take refuge abroad. According to a report by the N-TV television station, the authorities in Thuringia and Saxony heard nothing of this intelligence information.

As recently announced, the federal intelligence agency (BfV) evidently shielded a former undercover agent until 2012 to save him from prosecution. In the summer of 2001, “Primus”—alias Ralf M., from Zwickau—was suspected of hiring the two vehicles in which the members of the NSU drove to southern Germany to commit two of their murders.

The name of the rental firm that provided the cars remains unknown. “Primus” denies any complicity in the crimes. But former intelligence officer Michael Faber considers the denial implausible, due to the timing of the rental and the murders, and “Primus’s” close connections with the right-wing milieu.

As the N-TV programme indicated in a further report, “Primus” was in close contact with the suspected arms suppliers, Jan Werner and André E. The latter is also in the dock at the NSU trial. The Zwickau undercover agent is thought to have been financially supported to a lavish extent by the BfV. If Faber is to be believed, “Primus” was initially only a casual worker: “Then, after an extremely short time, he opened a business and ended up as a haulage contractor. He must have earned a lot of money from federal government”, said Faber.

If “Primus” did indeed support the trio, then it is clear why the BfV waited until 2012 to reveal his employment as an undercover man: legal culpability for “supporting a terrorist organisation” lapses after a period of 10 years at the latest. The declaration that he had resigned from service in 2002 could have been used as an excuse for shredding his record “in accordance with the procedural deadline” in 2010.

It is also possible that state agencies in North Rhine-Westphalia are more deeply involved in the machinations of the right-wing terrorism than previously known. As a Cologne businessman said in a sworn statement, two civilian police officers appeared conspicuously early on the scene shortly after the bombing on Cologne’s Keupstraße. The June 2004 nail-bomb attack, which is attributed to the NSU, injured 22 people, some seriously; many of them were migrants.

The North Rhine-Westphalia interior ministry has now admitted to the presence of the two police officers—more than eight years after the attack. Even the federal parliamentary investigation committee refuses to consider the occurrence coincidental. Clemens Binninger, chairman of the Christian Democratic Union, said that Keupstraße did not lie within the patrol domain of the two officers and their guard dogs. Furthermore, one of the city’s two police superintendents was also there—a rank hardly to be encountered on a normal police patrol.

As soon as 5 to 10 minutes before the arrival of the first police and fire vehicles, the two junior officers were on the scene, where—in Binninger’s words—they must have “almost stumbled over the feet” of the perpetrators.

Neonazi murder trial opens to protests: here.

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