<![CDATA[First they came for the neo-Nazis…]]>

The children of German neo-Nazis could soon be
removed from their families and taken into care – in a bid to beat a rise in the
glorification of Hitler and the Third Reich.

German authorities are becoming increasingly
concerned with the number of summer camps and special schools brainwashing
youngsters into worshipping a movement that killed six million Jews in the
Holocaust.

A recent raid on one camp turned up jigsaw
puzzles showing Germany’s pre-World War 2 borders and colouring books where
children were encouraged to crayon in the moustache of Hitler.

Cakes with lightning S.S. flashes on them and
embroidery with swastikas were also found – both banned symbols under the
postwar constitution.

It has led to calls for the government to look
at ways to take the children of the worst neo-Nazi families into
care.

Child welfare expert Günther Hoffmann said:
‘If ideological influence reaches such proportions that it can threaten
children’s well-being, state or civic bodies are obliged to look into the
situation.

‘If we don’t, we are going to incur massive
problems in the future.’

The children, who are sent to the camps by
their neo-Nazi parents, are taught that democracy is for ‘weaklings’.

They are also told that only a ‘people’s
community’, as preached by the Nazis, can save the country under a new Fuehrer –
one who has yet to be found.

The children who attend these summer camps get
to do all the normal things youngsters do – swim, horse ride, canoe, trek and
sleep outdoors.

But they also travel back in time to worship a
movement that also brought about the greatest war in
history.

Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine obtained a copy
of an email for a neo-Nazi retreat at Ahrensfelde outside Berlin where
youngsters were offered horse riding and divided into groups according to their
‘world view’ – a favourite phrase of the Nazis.

There were lectures on offer about the rise of
the Nazis and how they ‘saved’ Germany in the 1930’s following defeat in
WW1.

‘Volk und Vaterland’ – people and fatherland –
camps have sprung up all over Germany in recent years to ‘educate’ the
impressionable children of these extremists.

The rise of neo-Nazism is a worrying trend in
Germany, which also involves ‘circling the wagons’ where supporters move in with
in-laws and grandparents into areas where all support one another.

The most drastic example of this is Jamal in
Mecklenburg, 100 miles from Berlin, where 99 percent of inhabitants are Nazis
and proud of it.

‘Their aim? A nationalist upbringing outside
the mainstream,’ said Der Spiegel in its report on the phenomenon.

In June police got wind of a reunion of
neo-Nazi families from across Germany and turned them back at the gates of the
Finnhuete holiday village.

Government officials say that ‘several
thousand’ households in Germany are now raising their children to admire the
Nazis.

Raids have turned up S.S. flags, books
glorifying German ‘warriors’ in the war, records of banned Nazi songs and
scrapbooks of major Third Reich figures who are the heroes of those trying
desperately to build a Fourth Reich.

‘They are becoming part of a sworn ‘fighting
community’ hidden behind a middle-class façade,’ said Der Spiegel.

And the banned German Youth Faithful to the
Homeland group (HDJ) still has a core membership which meets in secret and rents
cottages at holiday parks in Saxony where far-right supporters make up one fifth
of the electorate.

A recent intelligence report on the scene in
the state of Brandenburg near Berlin said: ‘The children of far-right extremist
parents grow up as part of collectives of ‘comrades.’

‘The parents of these children rely on dances,
children’s parties and the apparent feeling of security in neo-Nazi youth
camps.’

The NPD, the main neo-Nazi party in Germany
which has successfully resisted several government attempts to ban it, said in
its newspaper that the ‘nationalist’s life task is to raise the next generation’
of radical rightists.

There is also a spike in registering old
Germanic names such as Markward, Hermann, Lothar and Siegfried for new-borns in
neo-Nazi families

The domestic intelligence agency report in
Brandenburg added: ‘Right-wing extremist parents make a connection with National
Socialism with what they name their children, thereby transforming what are in
the end rather everyday names into racist calling cards.’

Children of neo-Nazis could be taken into care to stop them being brainwashed at summer camps