Via the Huffington Post:
JAMEL, Germany — This is a town taken over by neo-Nazis.
Wooden signposts by the main road point to Vienna, Paris, and Braunau am Inn – the birthplace of Adolf Hitler. A far-right leader runs his demolition company from home, its logo featuring a man smashing a Star of David with a sledgehammer.
Every few months, townsfolk host outdoor parties where guests sing “Hitler is my Fuehrer” to chants of “Heil” around a massive bonfire.
Jamel is the most extreme manifestation of a chilling phenomenon in the former communist East Germany: a creeping encroachment of neo-Nazism that makes Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania one of only two states where Germany’s biggest far-right party, the National Democratic Party, or NPD, sits in parliament.
The extreme-right is believed to be behind some 40 attacks in the state over the past year, including stones thrown through windows of political parties and fireworks blown up in a prosecutor’s mailbox. Last year in Jamel, witnesses say, a neo-Nazi punched a visitor and shouted his allegiance to Hitler.
The state has Germany’s highest unemployment rate outside Berlin, at 12.7 percent in December, and few industries – fueling xenophobia the neo-Nazis have capitalized on. Only 2 percent of the population is foreign born, but officials say that lack of immigrant contact itself has reinforced suspicions.
For more information, see original article.
