Neo-Nazi ideology is thriving in the tiny German village of Jamel. So seeing us— two obviously Jewish fellows— poking around town was quite a sight… especially when the police showed up
W
hen Sven Krueger strode toward me swiftly and threateningly, I recognized him immediately. It was the face I’d seen — shaven head, flashing eyes, trademark rolled-up beard — in the many photos I had studied in preparation for our visit to this German village.
“Raus! Raus!” he shouted without preamble.
“Warum?” I asked, mustering up my best German. “Why do we have to leave?”
“Because you’re a Jew,” he said. He advanced toward us, waving his hands menacingly. “And this is our town.”
That was our welcome to Jamel, a remote hamlet in northern Germany, a short drive away from the Baltic Sea. The village is in the Nordwestmecklenburg district, an area that identifies deeply with the National Democratic Party (NPD), Germany’s far right-wing faction, and has put several neo-Nazis into the parliament. (The extreme right is thought to be behind dozens of violent attacks and instances of vandalism over the past decade.) And Jamel, with its few dozen residents, is perhaps the most extreme manifestation of a chilling phenomenon in the former Communist East Germany: encroaching neo-Nazism.
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