September 27, 2005
Paul Spiegel, the head of Germany's Jewish community, has said the Central Council of Jews in Germany would lodge a criminal complaint against a politician from the far-right NPD party. The NPD member of the regional assembly of Saxony, Klaus-Jürgen Menzel, had declared on German television last Thursday: "I still hold the Fuehrer (Adolf Hitler) for a great statesman, perhaps one of the greatest we ever had." Menzel is also deputy leader of the Saxony NPD, which got 9,2 per cent at last year's regional elections. NPD politicians have repeatedly produced outcry in Germany for espousing the Nazis' ideology and phrases. The party is under observation by the German services, but an attempt to have the party banned by the Federal Constitutional Court failed two years ago on procedural grounds.
