The discovery of a neo-Nazi indoctrination camp has forced Germany to face up to its extremists, writes Derek Scallyin Berlin
UNTIL NOW, the ideology most associated with German campsites was the FKK or "free body culture" movement - nudists to the rest of us.
But camping in Germany has lost its innocence after police stormed a camp of 14 white tents near the Baltic port city of Rostock. They discovered a neo-Nazi indoctrination camp for youth, and scenes straight from a Leni Riefenstahl film.
The camp was awash with banned swastikas: on books, flags, even tea towels. All signs were in old German script; one tent bore a sign reading "Führerbunker".
Staying at the camp were 39 uniformed boys and girls aged between eight and 14 who, police said, were being "schooled" in national socialist ideology by members of the Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend (HDJ, or "Patriotic German Youth"). Pictures of the camp show fat men with Hitler Youth haircuts and flaxen-haired women with old-fashioned dresses. The proliferation of sizeable tattoos appears the only concession to the 21st century.
"There was a regimented camp routine complete with flag-hoisting, in which behaviour and living conditions were exercised as in the National Socialist era," said the official police report.
News of the raid, and images of the camp taken by left-wing organisations, have caused a stir in the media and put politicians on the defensive.
Discussion of the country's extreme-right scene is usually limited to a hand-wringing discussion about whether or not the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) should be banned. One camp favours a ban to starve the party of political funding; the other side says that trying to outlaw the NPD would be free publicity for the party without solving the problem it represents. Volunteer groups monitoring extreme-right organisations have described the camp raid as a wake-up call about the size and diversity of the far-right scene in Germany.
"There are over 150 neo-Nazi organisations and splinter groups in Germany besides the NPD," said Andre Aden, spokesman for Recherche-Nord, which released pictures of the HDJ camp. "These neo-Nazi group can be hunting groups, or sports groups. You can find an event every weekend, somewhere in Germany."
THE HDJ IS one of the better-known of the smaller extremist groups, a successor to another neo-Nazi group known as Wiking Jugend ("Viking Youth"). German authorities charged with monitoring extremist organisations say the HDJ "targets children, ideologising them through apparently apolitical activities".
Two years ago, the HDJ made the headlines in Germany after another camp was exposed and, then as now, politicians and public figures lined up to condemn the organisation.
"Children were wearing uniforms and were introduced to the symbols and ideologies of the Nazi period without any historical context, in much the same way that the Hitler Youth did ," said Charlotte Knobloch, the president of the Council of Jews in Germany this week.
Despite the spectacular raid, it is far from clear whether German politicians at federal and state level can agree on how to act.
In Berlin, the federal government is wary of calls for bans: an attempt to outlaw the NPD collapsed in the constitutional court six years ago after it emerged that the party was riddled at all levels with secret service agents. The court threw out the case, saying that it could not rule out these state-sponsored agents had acted within the NPD as agents provocateurs.
"Everyone who talks now about an 'if' or 'when' of a concrete ban damages an effective fight against the extreme right," said a spokesman of the federal interior ministry in Berlin to Spiegel Online.
Voluntary groups such as Recherche-Nord say it is impossible for authorities to agree a common political position because of widespread ignorance of the far-right landscape beyond the NPD. Recherche-Nord claims that many state-level agencies that monitor extremists are underplaying the danger of the smaller groups, and even withholding information from their political superiors.
"The state agency in Lower Saxony, for instance, didn't even mention the HDJ in their annual extremist report last year, even though we sent them documentation on three separate camps the HDJ organised," said Aden. "The politicians don't act because they don't know about these groups and what they're up to. The monitoring agencies don't mention the groups because they aren't called to account to do so."
With neither the knowledge nor the appetite to act, he argues, German politicians are giving their passive permission for the continuation of the country's neo-Nazi camp carry-on.
The discovery of a neo-Nazi indoctrination camp has forced Germany to face up to its extremists, writes Derek Scally in Berlin