Posted on 06/15/2023 3:20:50 PM PDT by Milagros
Key names, entities:
François Genoud, Shukeiri, Fatah, PLO, PFLP, Yasser Arafat, George Habash [Habbache], Karl van de Put, Johan Schuller, Herald Angelke, [Udo] Otto Albrecht, Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, Gundolf Keller [Köhler], Willi Voss [Pohl], L'oeuvre Francaise, Jean Tireault, Jean Robert Debbaudt, Manfred Roeder [Röder], Volker Heidel.
AHMAD SHUKEIRI [SHUKAIRY / SHUQAIRY] AND TACUARA (1962)
(his promoting of neo-Nazis at UN, while quoting NYT, which in fact details its Nazism)
Recall of Arab Delegate from U.N. is Sought; ‘saluted’ Tacuara December 3, 1962
[PDF]
A move for the recall by Saudi Arabia of its permanent representative to the United Nations, Ahmad Shukairy, was under way here today, with Arab diplomats heading the drive. The desire for Shukairy’s removal from the UN scene, long contemplated by more moderate Arabs here, gained heavy impetus here this weekend after the official Saudi Arabian spokesman declared openly a “salute” to the anti-Semitic Tacuara movement in Argentina and proposed that UN “adopt” the Tacuara movement.https://www.jta.org/archive/recall-of-arab-delegate-from-u-n-is-sought-saluted-tacuara
Shukairy’s “salute” to the Tacuara movement was voiced Friday before the General Assembly’s Special Political Committee which is currently debating the Arab issue. Lucio Garcia del Solar, Argentine representative in the committee, immediately objected to the Shukairy “salute,” telling the United Nations that his people and Government reject everything that Tacuara advocates.
Embarrassed Arab diplomats, annoyed for many years by Shukairy’s intemperate attacks against Israel and Jews, let it be known that they are asking the Saudi Government to take Shukairy away from the UN. Some of the Arab diplomats apologized personally not only to Argentineans here but also to other Latin Americans, volubly assuring all that they felt Shukairy had gone much too far in his anti-Israeli drive by endorsing an open neo-Nazi movement like Tacuara.
A sharp protest against Shukairy’s endorsement of Tacuara was received here today by Dr. Leopoldo Benites, of Ecuador, chairman of the committee in which Shukairy called for the “adoption” of Tacuara. The protest came from Label A. Katz, president of the International Council of B’nai B’rith, who visited Argentina last summer and probed into the neo-Nazi movement there.
“Never in the history of the United Nations” Mr. Katz wired Ambassador Benites, “has any delegate had the audacity to make the kind of outrageous proposal offered by Mr. Ahmad Shukairy when he recommended that the racist Tacuara be “adopted by the United Nations.”
Argentine Youths in Nazi Group Salute and Cry: 'Hail Tacuara!'; Anti-Semitic Organization, Said to Be Growing, Asserts It Fights 'Zionism, Capitalism and Communism' Tells About Drills He Doubts Charges
Sept. 16, 1962
The New York Times Archives
BUENOS AIRES, Sept. 15 (AP)--The fuzzy-faced 15-year old boy flushed with pride as the roomful of teen-agers fixed their gaze on him. Standing erect, he raised his arm in the Nazi salute and shouted, "Hail Tacuara!"https://www.nytimes.com/1962/09/16/archives/argentine-youths-in-nazi-group-salute-and-cry-hail-tacuara.html
Facts - Volumes 15-17 - Page 424 - Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith - 1963
During his various tenures as a delegate to the United Nations, Shukairy demonstrated virulent hatred of Israel and Jews ...https://books.google.com/books?id=n9c3AQAAIAAJ&q=shukairy+diatribe
In 1962 at the U.N., Shukairy even went so far as to praise the militant, anti-Jewish and neo-Nazi storm-troop gang in Argentina know as Tacuara. He said: "Recently in Argentina, as was reported in The New York Times...
instance, he declared: "I have never been an anti-Semite; I am a Semite myself." This semantic dodge has long been used by anti-Jewish Arab bigots, and by their supporters in the American anti-Jewish press, to obfuscate the palpable..
Review Of The Monthhttps://books.google.com/books?&id=OjLnAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22removed%22
Anti Semitism at UN
Arab delegates spouted the most vicious kind of anti-Semitism ever heard in the halls of the United Nations during a debate on the Arab refugee issue in the General Assembly's special political committee.
The worst statement was made by Ahmad Shukairy, of Saudi Arabia. He said, Argentina "should be saluted" because of its violently anti-Jewish youth organization, Tacuara, and added: "Tacuara has proclaimed a crusade... we propose that Tacuara be adopted by the United Nations." This was too much even for Saudi Arabia's king Faisal, who removed Shukairy from his UN post. Egypt's representative characterized Israelis as "Nazis," and ridiculed the "Jewish"-sounding names of Israeli leaders before they adopted Hebrew names.
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HASSAN SALAMEH
(WW2 and 1972 Munich Massacre)
Background of Slain Terrorist January 24, 1979
[PDF]
The bomb death in Beirut yesterday of Ali Hassan Salameh, the notorious “Abu Hassan” who engineered the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, was greeted with grim satisfaction in Israel today. The terrorist leader, a member of the top echelon of El Fatah and a close personal associate of PLO chief Yaser Arafat, left a trail of murder and bloodshed in his wake.https://www.jta.org/archive/background-of-slain-terrorist
Israeli security sources recalled that Salameh, born 38 years ago, inherited a legacy of violence. His father, Hassan Salameh, led Arab marauders, during the 1936-38 disturbances in Palestine. He fled to Germany and offered his services to the Nazis during World War 11. He was dropped by parachute near Jericho in 1944 to organize an Arab uprising behind Allied lines. He failed in that mission and was killed four years later during Israel’s war for independence.
The younger Salameh was an early member of El Fatah, the terrorist arm of the PLO and rose rapidly in its ranks. He was one of the “brains” behind the murderous “Block September” gang that carried out numerous assassinations, terrorist attacks off civilians and aerial hijackings, culminating in the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games in September, 1972.
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1969-1980S
(1982)
Ronald Reagan Library (.gov)
Files Folder Title: Palestinian Liberation Organization
..stepped-up propaganda of the Arab League, Arab diplomats and the PLO. ...https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/public/digitallibrary/smof/publicliaison/blackwell/box-057/40_047_7009056_057_005_2017.pdf/MS241_(10).pdf
Links Between the Neo-Nazis and the PLO
Publications both in Israel and abroad have established that ties have existed between the PLO and various neo-Nazi groups since the 1960s when ex-SS officers found asylum in Arab countries provided advice and guidance to the budding PLO.
In April 1969, a world conference of neo-Nazi Organizations, on which about 100 delegates from Europe and Latin America participated was held in Barcelona, at which an Algerian delegate proposed a resolution condemning Zionist "imperialism" and succeeded in obtaining a promise from the neo-Nazi organizations of assistance in both manpower and arms for the PLO. The first manifestation of this assistance was the recruitment of an ex-SS officer to command a PFLP training camp at Basra in southern Iraq. In September 1969 Jean Tireault, secretary of the neo-Nazi movement in Brussels, was arrested on suspicion of maintaining contacts with PLO members who had carried out a terrorist attack in Belgium.
In 1970 a complex network of financial cooporation between neo-Nazi organizations and the PLO was uncovered, following the appearance of François Genoud, a Swiss banker who was the director of the Arab Bank in Geneva, as an observer of a PLO terrorist who had attacked an El Al plane at Zurich in February 1969. Genoud...of being connected with the 'Spider' currency smuggling network, which was regarded as responsible for the transfer to Swiss Bank vaults of the booty of Nazi thefts and robberies.
On 1973 a number of of European newspapers revealed that two well-known neo-Nazis, the Belgian Karl van de Put and the German Johan Schuller, had acted as recruiting agents for Fatah.
Shortly before the October 1973 Yom Kippur war, the German neo-Nazi newspaper 'Nationalist and Soldiers' Chronicle' offered its readers a trip to the Middle East to learn about the Palestinian struggle. The notice stated that money was no problem, and that what was important was courage and friendship. At the same time Austrian police arrested the Austian neo-Nazi leader Herald Engelke, after his party had given asylum and assistance to PLO members who had been smuggled into Austria using forged Israeli passports in order carry out acts of terror there.
In January 1978 the general prosecutor of the West German Supreme Court at Karlsruhe opened an investigation into links between the neo-Nazi organizations and the PLO, following the arrest of 4 Germans who were members of the Adolf Hitler Free Korps - which had been engaged in arms-running from Arab countries on behalf of the PLO.
For the past few years, the various PLO factions have been showing their appreciation for the help which they have received from the neo-Nazis in Europe by providing them with financial assistance and training at PLO camps. For example, the West German student Gundolf Keller, a member of the neo-Nazi Military Sports Club who was killed in September 1980 when an explosive charge went off at the Munich Beer Festival, had undergone military training at a PLO camp in southern Lebanon. Karl Heinz Hoffman who heads this group, has also spent some in Beirut for "Business purposes." The exact nature of his business was later revealed in conversations which were monitored by German security forces in which he told his Palestinian friends that he was acting in the way Adolf Hitler would have acted had he still been alive.
Further details of neo-Nazi-PLO copporation was revealed on 30 January 1981, during the interrogation of Adv. Manfred Roeder, one of the leaders of the West Gernan neo-Nazi movement.
Jun 18, 2012 — Munich Olympics Massacre Files Reveal Neo-Nazis Helped Palestinian Terrorists. Forty years ago, the massacre of Israeli athletes and coaches..https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/files-show-neo-nazis-helped-palestinian-terrorists-in-munich-1972-massacre-a-839467.html
Ex neo-Nazi talks of unwittingly helping PLO
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS June 18, 2012
BERLIN — A former German neo-Nazi tells a magazine he unwittingly helped PLO militants in their plot to kill Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Willi Pohl told Der Spiegel in its Monday edition he helped plot mastermind Abu Daoud procure false documents and took him to meetings.https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-ex-neo-nazi-talks-of-unwittingly-helping-plo-2012jun18-story.html
He says: “I chauffeured Abu Daoud all around Germany, where he met with Palestinians in various cities.”
Pohl, who has since distanced himself from violence, talked with the magazine after it obtained intelligence documents indicating police reported seeing the two together two months before the attack.
His general connections to the PLO have been long known, and a judge also mentioned a link with Daoud in a 1972 arrest warrant for Pohl, who was picked up three weeks after the Olympic massacre.
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LINKS BETWEEN P.L.O. AND NEO-NAZIS SEEN; Bavaria Regime Cites Suspicions of Munich Paramilitary Group Oct 1, 1980 —
BONN, Sept. 30 The Bavarian Interior Ministry said today that it suspected there were links between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the neo-Nazi paramilitary organization whose members were questioned in connection with the bombing last Friday at the Munich Oktoberfest.https://www.nytimes.com/1980/10/01/archives/links-between-plo-and-neonazis-seen-bavaria-regime-cites-suspicions.html
Report Neo-nazi Group Linked to PLO
October 2, 1980
[PDF]
Links between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Wehrsportsgruppe Hoffmann, the largest neo-Nazi paramilitary organization in West Germany, were reported today in Die Welt. The daily said that West German security agencies are informed on these contacts.
Wehrsportsgruppe Hoffmann was held responsible for the bomb explosion at the Munich Oktoberfest Sept. 26 in which 12 persons were killed, although its leader, Karl-Heinz Hoffmann and five associates were released from-custody for lock of evidence. One of the 213 people injured in the Munich outrage, a 17-year-old boy, died today in the hospital. Four others are reported to be on the critical list.
According to Die Welt, the paramilitary group 4 as a record of associations with the PLO going back several years. The paper also reported that members of the Hoffmann group drove German trucks to Palestinian terrorists in Lebanon. A convoy of similar trucks driven by neo-Nazis was seen on a highway in Bavaria shortly after the Munich outrage.
According to Die Welt, PLO terrorists and neo-Nazis have organized public meetings in recent years. The National Zeitung, the largest neo-Nazi newspaper in West Germany, published in Munich, has consistently supported the PLO. A neo-Nazi activist, Udo Albrecht, 40, was arrested four years ago with PLO papers.
When apprehended, Albrecht had 80,000 Swiss Francs in his possession and a bank withdrawal receipt for 14,000 Francs. The German authorities established that the money was given to him by PLO officials for arms purchases. Albrecht was also accused of recruiting neo-Nazi Germans for PLO raids on Israel. He is presently in a prison near Bonn.
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Report Confirms Cooperation Between Neo-nazis and PLO
August 11, 1981
The annual report of the West German security services released here today for the first time officially confirms that there is cooperation between neo-Nazis in this country and the Palestine Liberation Organization. It is also the most detailed annual survey of rightwing and leftwing extremism in the Federal Republic.https://www.jta.org/archive/report-confirms-cooperation-between-neo-nazis-and-plo
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Charge That Four German Neo-nazis Trained by the PLO in Lebanon Had the Help of the German Embassy
August 17, 1981
[PDF]
... Baum confirmed that an unspecified number of German neo-Nazis received PLO military training in an Al Fatah camp near Beirut and that this information had been available to West German authorities since the start of 1980. But Baum insisted that the information was not enough to justify legal steps against the leader of the neo-Nazi group training in PLO installations.https://www.jta.org/archive/charge-that-four-german-neo-nazis-trained-by-the-plo-in-lebanon-had-the-help-of-the-german-embassy
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PLO - Pages 68- 69
Eliyahu Tal · [WZO] · 1982 ·
'We Are Anti-Israeli, Not Anti-Jewish"https://books.google.com/books?id=AXCgAAAAMAAJ&q=austria%20neo-nazi%201973%20plo
This distinction has often been claimed by PLO spokesmen.
However, since the late 1960s, the PLO has maintained contact with neo-Nazi and other extremist .. groups, providing training, smuggling arms, and distributing propaganda...
Despite the PLO's efforts to appear to be "only anti-Zionist, and not anti-Jewish, it has manifested its hatred for Jews time and again through its activities and propaganda.
PLO hijacker Lila Khaled stated in her autobiography: "At first I admired Hitler because I thought he was the enemy of the Jews."
"Carry the warfare of the Palestinians to Europe"
This was the resolution of a special conference Al-Fatah held in Beirut on August 14 , 1981 with Arafat in the chair. It was decided to cooperate with underground organizations in Europe, as well as to launch attacks against Jewish institutions (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 3, 1981, in a report of the attack on the synagogue in Vienna on the same date).
The Barcelona conference and beyond
A world conference of neo-Nazi organizations was held in Barcelona in April 2, 1969 with the participation of 100 delegates from Europe and Latin America, including two Fatah recruiters.
It adopted a resolution to assist the PLO in every way possible.
The first manifestation of this help was the recruitment of a former SS officer to command a PLO training camp at Basra, in Lebanon. In September of the same year, Jean Tireault, secretary of the neo-Nazi movement was arrested in Brussels in connection with PLO terrorists acts in Belgium.
At another meeting held in Paris, March 28 1970, Jean Robert Debbaudt, a Belgian ex-officer in Hitler's Waffen SS, leader of the neo-Nazi rexist Party, offered to place his group at the service of the PLO.
In Munich on September 16, 1972, 10 days after the mas- sacre of the Israeli athelets, a Nazi fascist rally, "the First National European Congress of Youth," was held. The 600 delegates cheered Black September to the rafters. Delegates also extolled Sirhan Sirhan , the Palestinian who killed Senator Robert Kennedy.
The Swiss director of the Arab Bank in Geneva, Francois Genoud, was suspected of being connected with the "Spider " network responsible for the transfer of Nazi booty to Swiss bank vaults. His appearance at the trial of El Al plane hijackers in Zurich in 1970 uncovered the complex financial cooperation between the neo-Nazis and the PLO.
The public prosecutor in Karlsruh, West Germany, investigated a case of arms smuggling to Europe from Arab countries through a PLO affiliate. Three of those arrested were members of the " Adolf Hitler Free Corps" (January 1978).
Belgian Minister of Justice Jean Gol stated that neo-Nazi terrorist Paul Leroy, arrested in early May 1982, belonged to the extreme .. Whersport-sgruppe of Karl-Heinz Hoffman, who was charged with the terrorist explosion at the Munich Oktoberfest (September 28, 1980). Leroy and other members had trained at the PLO's Bir Hassan camp in Lebanon.
Hoffman himself told Bild am Sonntag he visited Beirut in July 1980 in connection with supplies to the PLO.
A director of the West German Anti - Crime Bureau stated in a seminar held in Rome (February 1982) that neo-Nazis were being helped and financed by PLO.
According to FBI reports American neo-Nazis (led by Harold Covington) and Fatah personmel trained together in a camp in North Carolina (Ma'ariv, August 7, 1981).
The Austrian Police arrested a neo-Nazi leader, Herald Angelke, for giving shelter to PLO members who had infiltrated into Austria with forged passports (October 1973).
Security sources in Bonn reported that Otto Albrecht, a neo-Nazi, arrested in West Germany in possession of arms and PLO identity papers, had recruited Germans for training in PLO camps in Lebanon.
L'oeuvre Francaise , an extreme right - wing group operating in France, agreed to carry out ter- rorist operations at the PLO's request as early as 1977.
French police in August 1977 arrested a Palestinian terrorist and two extreme right-wing Italians who had trained in Lebanon.
The Los Angeles Herald Examiner reported on October 8, 1980: "agents of the PLO are rushing recruits who had been sent for training in the Middle East to French and German neo-Nazi units.
Les états terroristes et la guerre des lâches [Terrorist states and the war of cowards] - Page 72 Suzanne Labin · (Autoedition, 1987)
On retrouve, s'entraînant dans les camps palestiniens du Liban, les Walter Kexel et autres terroristes du groupe néo-nazi Karl Heinz Hoffman, le dirigeant du Wehzsportsgruppe (qui signifie résurgence du nazisme). Il a déclaré au journal Bill am Sontag qu'il se déplaçait souvent à Beyrouth pour y négocier des affaires d'armes avec l'OLP . Gundolf Keller, qui animait une branche sportive du réseau Hoffman , fut tué en septembre 1980 au cours de l'attentat par des Palestiniens au Festival de la Bière à Münich (12 morts). Les néo-nazis belges du groupe Paul Leroy ont effectué un stage au camp palestinien de Bir Hassam.https://books.google.com/books?id=8S9FAQAAIAAJ&q=Gundolf+Keller+neo-nazi
Otto Albrecht, star du néo-nazisme allemand, a été arrêté en 1982 avec des papiers lui donnant le pouvoir de recruter des volontaires pour Yasser Arafat. Du versement sur un compte bancaire à Hambourg de sommes disproportionnées avec la valeur des véhicules livrés, la police allemande tira la conclusion que ce groupe néo-nazi était financièrement soutenu par des mouvements palestiniens communisants, notamment par le groupe d'Abou Nidal.]
We find, training in the Palestinian camps of Lebanon, the Walter Kexel and other terrorists of the neo-Nazi group Karl Heinz Hoffman, the leader of the Wehzsportsgruppe (which means resurgence of Nazism).
He told the Bill am Sontag newspaper that he often traveled to Beirut to negotiate arms deals with the PLO there.
Gundolf Keller [Köhler], who hosted a sports branch of the Hoffman network, was killed in September 1980 during the attack by Palestinians at the Beer Festival in Munich (12 dead). The Belgian neo-Nazis of the Paul Leroy group completed an internship at the Palestinian camp of Bir Hassam.
Otto Albrecht, star of German neo-Nazism, was arrested in 1982 with papers giving him authority to recruit volunteers for Yasser Arafat. From the payment into a bank account in Hamburg of sums disproportionate to the value of the vehicles delivered, the German police drew the conclusion that this neo-Nazi group was financially supported by Palestinian communist movements, in particular by the group of Abu Nidal.
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GERMANS LINK P.L.O. TO DOMESTIC TERROR
By John Vinocur, Special To the New York Times
May 27, 1981
Senior West German security officials possess ''clear indications'' that a number of fugitive members of left-wing West German terrorist groups are hiding under the protection of the Palestine Liberation Organization in areas it controls in Lebanon.https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/27/world/germans-link-plo-to-domestic-terror.html
The same officials also reported that despite denials by the P.L.O. they suspect the Palestinians have given training to right-wing West German extremists involved in neo-Nazi paramilitary organizations.
The disclosures were made during a discussion of international links of West German terrorists. The conversation took place with the understanding that the names and functions of the officials would not be published.
The security experts identified the terrorist fugitives in Lebanon as members of the Red Army Faction, founded by the late Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof. The group was responsible for several years of intensely violent activity in West Germany through 1977. Possible Links to Haig Bombing.
The experts also disclosed that they are convinced that the Red Army Faction was responsible for the attempted assassination in Belgium in June 1979 of Alexander M. Haig Jr., who was then completing his term as commanding general of NATO. Originally, there had been suspicions that the Irish Republican Army might have been involved in the bomb attack.
The attack on Mr. Haig was the last clearly discernible major operation by the Red Army Faction, although plans for other acts have been found, the experts said.
West Germany, however, has not been free of terrorist killings. Heinz Herbert Karry, the finance minister of the state of Hesse, the national treasurer of the Free Democratic Party and a well-known Jewish supporter of Israel, was killed this month.
The police have been trying to determine if there were links between Mr. Karry's death, described as a political murder, the fatal shooting in December of a Jewish publisher in the city of Erlangen, and the killing in Austria May 1 of Heinz Nittel, a Jewish public official and president of the Austrian-Israeli Society. A Palestinian group calling itself the Fatah Revolution Committee told an Austrian magazine this week that it was behind the killing of Mr. Nittel. No Evidence of a Soviet Role
The discussion was limited to what the officials said was direct firsthand knowledge of West German terrorism, distinguishing their definition of terrorism from that of security officers in other countries who appear to assimilate some acts by ''national liberation movements'' into their overall notions of the phenomenon.
Tracing the pattern of international support that West German terrorists have found, one of the officials said: ''From our point of view, there are no facts in hand that would allow us to say that the Soviet Union is behind West German terrorists in any direct sense. This goes for the entire Eastern European bloc.''
On the other hand, the official said, it was not possible to exclude that there may be Soviet-bloc pressures or lines of guidance involved in the relations between West German terrorists and the Government of Southern Yemen or the Palestine Liberation Organization. This the official said, was only an hypothesis.
In areas where the officials spoke with certainty and conviction, however, it was stated that the Red Army Faction had received training and shelter from the P.L.O. Ties with Southern Yemen were also developed, and the officials said ''there is still a certain logistical basis'' of involvement between the country's Marxistoriented regime and West German terrorists. 'Virtually Certain' of P.L.O. Role
The officials spoke of being ''virtually certain'' that there were contacts between the Palestine Liberation Organization and members of a banned neo-Nazi paramilitary organization called the Defense Sport Group Hoffmann. ''We suspect that training was given,'' one of the officials said.
It had been established that Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, the group's leader, made a number of Middle Eastern trips for the purpose of buying military-type vehicles. The officials mentioned the possibility of a ''general ideological involvement'' between the right-wing West German extremists and the P.L.O. concerning Israel and Jews. There were no indications, the officials stressed, of cooperation between the groups on operations.
The Hoffmann group came into the news last year when Gundolf Kohler, a 21-year-old student described as having participated in military-type exercises with the group, was named as the prime suspect in a bomb explosion at the Munich Oktoberfest. He and 11 others were killed.
At the time of the explosion, the Bavarian interior ministry said it had reason to suspect links between the P.L.O. and the Hoffmann group. The P.L.O.'s representative in Bonn, Abdalla Frangi, rejected the ministry's statement. A New View of the P.L.O.
The question of the West German Government's relationship with Palestinian organizations has been a subject of dispute since a trip by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to Saudi Arabia in April. On his return, Mr. Schmidt said: ''If we in the West continue to treat the P.L.O. basically as terrorist and don't learn to differentiate among its factions - the P.L.O. is, after all, nothing but an umbrella group for a variety of organizations -that will be the surest way to drive it into the arms of Moscow.''
Discussing terrorist ties with other organizations and countries, the officials said that shelter had been given to West German terrorists in Iraq in the past but that they did not know if this was still the case. In 1978, according to non-West German security forces, five suspected German terrorists who were arrested in Yugoslavia and then released flew to Iraq when they were freed.
In drawing up a balance sheet on the attitude of Eastern Europe toward West German terrorists, the officials mentioned cases in which Bulgaria assisted in the arrest of suspected terrorists in 1978, and a vocal expression of willingness by East Germany in 1975 to help in tracking down the abductors of Peter Lorenz, a West Berlin Christian Democratic leader.
On the other hand, Michael Baumann, a former terrorist who has talked to reporters, maintains he traveled in East Germany while a fugitive, was talked to by the police there and then was allowed to continue on his way.
The officials described the West German terrorist movement as being in ''very poor shape.'' There are 13 so-called hard-core members of the Red Army Faction still at large; the officials believe perhaps 550 sympathizers and friends, as opposed to full-time activists, now live in a dozen West German cities.
Oktoberfest assassination: Is the single perpetrator thesis still tenable?
Apr 1, 2017 —
The WSG Hoffmann was in Lebanon in 1980/81, where it worked for PLO Kraftfahrdienst ... where Gundolf Köhler was honored as a hero..https://thomas-riegler.net/2017/04/01/oktoberfest-attentat-warum-die-einzeltaeterthese-nicht-mehr-zu-halten-ist/
[Gundolf Köhler was with Karl-Heinz Hoffmann's neo-Nazis. He killed at Oktoberfest. Mr. Führer. Karl-Heinz Hoffmann ran his terrorist military-sports... Far-right terror at Oktoberfest An old man with hatred in his heart. Karl-Heinz Hoffmann fights for the Aryan race.]https://www.idnes.cz/xman/styl/oktoberfest-terorismsu-krajni-pravice-wehrsportgruppe-hoffmann-kohler.A170814_143558_xman-styl_fro
They called themselves Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann and practiced attacks in the woods with neo-Nazi ambitions. However, they didn't just stop at the preparations, one of the members, Gundolf Köhler, went to the Bavarian Oktoberfest with an explosive. The result was thirteen dead and over 200 wounded. According to critics, the state did not investigate far-right terrorism very carefully. For most of the year, the vast expanse of Theresienwiese on the southern edge of central Munich lies fallow. However, at the turn of September and October, large-capacity tents will be erected on it, in which six to seven million beer drinkers will take turns at the taprooms. Oktoberfest in 1980 also had a similar attendance, it was crowded around the tables and at the main gate. At ten o'clock in the evening of the second day, a deafening bang sounded near the entrance, then a desperate roar and a panicked scream. The body of the fire extinguisher filled with 1.39 kg of TNT, screws and nails killed thirteen people, including the bomber, and injured 211, 68 of them seriously. The heaviest terrorist attack in the history of post-war Germany took place to this day...
It was soon clear to the investigators that the twenty-one-year-old Gundolf Köhler had committed the crime, and that alone. For an unknown reason, the charge exploded prematurely. The case was closed. However, already during the investigation, witnesses brought various fragments of the story. According to one woman, Köhler and an unknown man were wrestling over an object that fell from their hands, after which an explosion occurred. Another witness saw Köhler talking excitedly with two men half an hour before the explosion, he said he had a suitcase with him. He was also mentioned by other witnesses, but none was found at the crime scene. Even in 2010, the victims demanded a DNA analysis of the findings from the crime scene, for example a part of the hand that could not be assigned to anyone. However, as is usual with closed cases, these items have since been destroyed, as have the 47 butts of six different brands of cigarettes that were found in Köhler's car.
Although Köhler had been in a neo-Nazi environment since he was fourteen, the investigators did not proactively look for connections in these circles. For example, they did not follow the lead of Heinz Lembke, who was supposed to offer weapons, ammunition and training among the ultra-right. They unsuccessfully searched Lembke's apartment and let him float, he was only apprehended a year later when forest workers discovered one of his secret places among the trees. While in custody, he revealed the location of 33 other warehouses in which the police found hundreds of weapons, 258 hand grenades, 156 kilos of explosives and meters of ammunition. Lembke might have said a lot more if he hadn't been found hanging in his cell in the middle of the investigation.
Militia with sharp
However, Köhler was primarily a member of the Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann, a banned paramilitary organization half a year before the assassination. And during house searches of his neo-Nazi associates, equipment and parts for making a bomb were found. The possible complicity of some of Köhler's species was also indicated by an incident in August 1982. A member of the group, Stefan Wagner, shot himself in the head after an hour-long car chase with the police, but before that he briefly took hostages, to whom he confessed to participating in the Oktoberfest assassination.
The Hoffmans were the most famous of the so-called Wehrsportgruppen (WSG), ultra-right-wing militant groups that held military exercises in the 1970s and 1980s and some of whose members committed murders and assassinations. For example, the boys from WSG Rohwer had seven attacks on NATO troops stationed in West Germany and one bank robbery. WSG Trenck operated in Austria, united around Gottfried Küssel, a four-times punished nestor of the ultra-right there. Hans-Christian Strache, today's chairman of the Free Austrian Party (FPÖ), also took part in at least one organized game of soldiers organized by Küsell in the 1990s.
Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann was formed in 1973, and in addition to hopping in the woods, its men also acted as security guards at neo-Nazi events. The main base of the group was in Bavaria, but its branches also operated in Frankfurt am Main, Bonn and Cologne. Far-right militants rejected parliamentary democracy and saw themselves as the vanguard of a violent coup, in the founder's words, "a radical transformation of the overall structure in all areas." The WSG was therefore banned by the Federal Ministry of Justice in January 1980, and eighteen truckloads of evidence, including weapons, were seized from their members by the police. On the day of dissolution, the group numbered four hundred men.
Neo-Nazi from the castle
The functioning of the group was governed by the Nazi führerprinzip, absolute obedience to the superior, who was Karl-Heinz Hoffmann. The boss, as he allowed himself to be called after the example of SA commander Ernst Röhm, was sentenced in June 1981 for half a dozen offenses ranging from grievous bodily harm to counterfeiting of money to nine and a half years. He was released after half of his sentence and went into the construction business, with his wife Franziska they owned up to 15 companies. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, they went to the town of Kahla in Thuringia, where the Nuremberg native spent his adolescence and from where he escaped to the West in the 1950s. The Hoffmanns successfully continued to renovate apartments and offices, and in 2004 they bought a castle with an adjacent farm, where Hoffmann now grows organic Mangalica pigs.
While Hoffmann sat, his comrades continued the "liberation struggle". For example, Odfried Hepp and Walter Kexel committed five bank robberies and several attacks on American garrisons in Germany, including with a car filled with explosives. In December 1980, before Hoffman's arrest, another former member of his WSG, Uwe Behrendt, murdered the chairman of the Nuremberg Jewish community and his wife. The murder Beretta belonged to Hoffman, and Franziska's glasses were found at the crime scene. But nothing proved to be true for the couple, and Behrendt fled to Lebanon, where he took his own life three quarters of a year later.
The entire hard core of WSG Hoffmann, whose chief had good contacts in the Palestine Liberation Organization, retreated to the Middle Eastern country. The Nazis from Germany were given a part of the Palestinian training camp south of Beirut. There they wanted to plan and rehearse terrorist attacks on the soil of the Federal Republic, which were supposed to lead to its overthrow and the establishment of a nationalist dictatorship. It's hard to say what life was really like for the Hoffmans on the edge of the desert, Behrendt allegedly abused and even tortured some of his men. One of them, a certain Kay-Uwe Bergmann, disappeared without a trace during his stay in the camp.
Those members of WSG Hoffmann who remained in Germany were also able to find surprising allies in the fight against the hated establishment. The already mentioned Odfried Hepp had been carrying the Stasi since 1981, which helped him escape to the GDR after the assassinations of American soldiers. Even the namesake Peter Weinmann was a Stasi agent between 1968 and 1986 and at the same time an informant for the Federal Republic's counterintelligence.
Already at that time there were accusations that the authorities were "blind in the right eye", that they were less consistent or even lax in their approach to the extreme right compared to the fight against the ultra-left. They were confirmed in November 2011, when it was revealed that a shamrock called the Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund had been running rampant in the country for thirteen years, with state agents playing a very dubious role in its story. It was enough for the trio to murder ten people, including one policewoman, detonate a bomb twice and injure dozens of people in the center of Cologne, and rob fourteen banks. In response, German authorities began to pay more attention to ultra-right radicals and, among other things, reopened the case of the 1980 Oktoberfest attack.
___
The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam ...
George Michael · [University Press of Kansas] 2006 · [Chapter 5] · Pages 124-128
Black September and the Black Internationalhttps://books.google.com/books?id=RvLtAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA125
The rise of Palestinian terrorism in the early 1970’s then, caused some elements of the European extreme right to once again take interest in the Middle Eastern affairs. After King Hussein of Jordan expelled the PLO from Jordan in 1970, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat created a new terrorist organization called Black September. The organization established strong ties with German left-wing radicals. Working together, they carried out one of the most infamous acts in the annals of European terrorism-the kidnapping and subsequent killing of several Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympic games in Munich, Germany. Actually, representatives of the extreme right had collaborated with Palestinian rejectionist groups long before the representatives of the radical left had.
A few neofascists even fought alongside Arab guerrillas in Middle Eastern conflicts. For example, Robert Courdroy, a veteran of the Belgian SS, died in combat while fighting for the Palestinians in 1968. And, on some occasions, the extreme right actually worked side by side with the radical left in support of Palestinian terrorists.
Both the extreme right and Palestinian rejectionists shared hostility toward Zionism. Early efforts on the part of the European extreme right to assist Palestinian rejectionists consisted primarily of financial support. The case of Francois Genoud is illustrative. Genoud founded a Swiss extreme right organization and worked as a trusted banker for German neo-Nazis. Reportedly well connected to Arab circles in the Middle East, Genoud founded the Arab Commercial Bank in Geneva and became a formidable financial power as tens of millions of dollars were funneled through his hands for the use of Palestinians in Europe. Through his various connections, Genoud was an important nexus between groups like Fatah and Black September on the one hand, and extremist groups in Europe on the other. (Claire Sterling, The Terror Network, 1984).
In his capacity as a shadowy financier, Genoud paid the legal costs for three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who stood trial for blowing up an Israeli jet in Zurich. Genoud's Nazi roots went quite deep. While studying in Bonn as a teenager in 1932, Genoud actually met Hitler. The young Genoud shook hands with his mentor and expressed his admiration for National Socialism. When he returned to Switzerland in 1934, he joined the proNazi Swiss National Front. Shortly thereafter in 1936, he traveled to Palestine, where he became a confidant of Grand Mufti al-Husseini. After the war, Genoud acquired all the posthumous rights to the writings of Hitler, Martin Bormann, and Josef Göbbels, increasing his fortune in the process. Using his Swiss banking connections, he helped many Nazis escape from Germany, an effort to which Grand Mufti al-Husseini also allegedly lent assistance. (Peter Wyden, The Hitler Virus: The Insidious Legacy of Adolf Hitler, 2001).
Genoud also helped underwrite the costs for the legal defense of Adolf Eichmann. According to some European press accounts, Genoud sold defeated Nazis' gold and deposited the proceeds into Swiss bank accounts to finance these projects. Genoud was particularly close to the grand mufti, serving as his financial adviser.
In 1958, he founded the Arab Commercial Bank in Geneva to manage the assets of the Algerian National Liberation Front. As mentioned earlier, several former Nazis, including Major General Otto Ernst Remer, assisted the rebels in their struggle against French colonial rule. Genoud was reportedly involved in financing terrorist groups, disseminating anti-Israeli propaganda throughout the Middle East, and assisting the Palestinian hijackers of a Lufthansa plane in 1972. He was particularly close to Dr. Waddi Haddad, the cofounder of the PFLP, and Ali Hassan Salameh of the Black September group. However, his activities did not go unnoticed by his enemies. In 1993 a bomb exploded in front of his house, and he barely escaped alive. Feeling trapped, Genoud committed suicide by drinking poison in May 1996. (Wyden, The Hitler Virus).
Another important financial benefactor of Palestinian causes was the wealthy Italian publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Ironically, Feltrinelli was a financial supporter of communist groups; however, he met secretly with the Italian neofascist Prince Valerio Borghese to discuss ways in which both the left and right could work together to battle imperialism. (Sterling, The Terror Network)
The Black International, which operated under the name of the European New Order, held a summit in Barcelona on behalf of the Palestinians. The organization was composed of various Nazis and fascists from Nazi Germany, Vichy France, Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, Mussolini's Italy, and the Greek colonels' military junta. The Spanish leader, General Francesco Franco, is believed to have endorsed the meeting. Two representatives from Fatah, the military arm of the PLO, attended the event. Reportedly, the delegates discussed raising money, organizing arms traffic, and providing ex-Nazi military instructors to help train guerrillas. A major endeavor was to recruit Caucasians to augment Fatah's forces in the Middle East and also collaborate in acts of sabotage and terrorism in Europe. (Ibid).
Several summits followed this event, including one held on September 16, 1972, barely ten days after Palestinian Black September terrorists killed eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Six hundred delegates to this gathering reportedly cheered Black September to the rafters. (Ibid).
In May 1979, another summit was held in Paris, where a former SS officer and Rexist Parry (a pro-fascist Belgian political parry that was active during the interwar years) member, Jean Roberts Debbaudt, pledged support to the Palestinian resistance. Still another right-wing extremist who established contacts in the Middle East was Jean Thiriart from Belgium, who served as a secretary for a neo-Nazi group called La Nation Europeene.
He shared many of the ideas of Francis Parker Yockey, including creating a European Third World bloc that could resist the United States. In 1968, he traveled to several Arab countries to gain support for his idea of a "European brigade," which he envisaged as a guerrilla army that would engage in armed struggle against American soldiers stationed in Europe. Reportedly, Thiriart actually served as an adviser to Fatah in 1969. He sought to convince his Arab interlocutors that it would be in their interest if the United States became enmeshed in a "silent war" against neofascist terrorists in Europe. (Lee, The Beast Reawakens).
He traveled to Iraq and conferred with Colonel Saddam Hussein, the future dictator of the country. According to Thiriart, the Iraqis were enthusiastic about the plan but were persuaded by their then sponsor, the Soviet Union, to abandon the plan. Thiriart was also believed to have been close to PFLP leader George Habash. (Ibid).
Other efforts to collaborate in the field of terrorism followed. For example, there were several instances of cooperation between German right-wing extremists and terrorist groups in the Middle East.
Following the example of European left-wing terrorists, members of a small German neo-Nazi group, Wehrsportgruppe-Hoffmann, sought to develop an alliance with the PLO and other Middle Eastern terrorist groups during the 1970s and early 1980s. Karl Heinz Hoffman, the leader of the group, traveled to Damascus in July 1980 to develop links between the PLO and East German intelligence agents. Hoffman also worked out a deal that provided used trucks to the PLO in exchange for training. (Ibid).
Members of this group reportedly received paramilitary training in PLO camps in Jordan and fought alongside Palestinians in that country during the "Black September" of 1970. (Bruce Hoffman, R. W. Terrorism in Europe since 1980).
One German neo-Nazi mercenary, Karl von Kyna, even died in combat during a Palestinian commando raid in September 1967. (Lee, "The Swastika and Crescent") .
One of the most notorious terrorist groups of this period was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which gained widespread notoriety in 1968 by hijacking several commercial airplanes. The leader of the PFLP, George Habash, received support from neo-fascists in Europe known as the Black International. The PFLP reportedly carried out terrorist attacks against Jewish targets in Europe with the assistance of Odfried Hepp and his neo-Nazi group, which unleashed a wave of bombings at four U.S. Army bases in Germany that damaged property and injured military personnel. (B Netanyahu, Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat the International Terrorist Network, New York, 2001).
In early 1970, a neo-Nazi group calling itself the Freikorps Adolf Hitler, founded by Udo Albrecht, was identified as having participated in the Black September war against King Hussein's government in Jordan. In 1978 German police arrested members of the Freikorps Adolf Hitler and another organization, the Hilfskorps Arabien, on suspicion of smuggling arms from the Middle East into West Germany for Palestinian operatives that were living there. In that same year, Albrecht was arrested in Germany and was found to be carrying a card that connected him to the Fatah organization. This arrest was the first direct proof German authorities had linking German radicals with Middle Eastern terrorist organizations. (Rand C. Lewis, A Nazi Legacy: R.W. Extremism in Postwar Germany, 1991).
Still another neo-Nazi with whom the PLO had contact was Manfred Röder. Following advice from Albrecht, he traveled to Lebanon to make contact with Yasser Arafat. He never met with the PLO chairman, however, instead speaking with his deputy, Abu Jihad. Disappointingly for Röder, Jihad refused to cooperate with him, which was a setback for relations between neo-Nazis and Palestinians. (Ibid).
Undaunted, Röder continued to look for supporters in the Middle East. In 1980 he traveled to Syria and Iraq to build a relationship of mutual support and trust, but these efforts appear to have failed. Other German extremists, however, were able to establish significant ties. There were also sporadic reports that surfaced during the 1980s of cooperation between German neo-Nazis and a Turkish fascist organization known as the "Gray Wolves." Mehmet Kengerle, who served with the SS in World War II, was the figure that allegedly sought to arrange this alliance. (Ibid).
The organization's most infamous member, Mehmet Ali Aga, attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul 11 in May 1981. This alliance, like the others that preceded it, was also short-lived and of limited significance.
More recently Fawsi Salim el-Mahdi, the leader of Yasser Arafat's Praetorian Guard, "Tanzim 17," included the Nazi salute in a graduation ceremony for Palestinian Authority police cadets. Known to his colleagues as "Abu Hitler." In fact his affection for the Third Reich is reflected in his choice of names for his two sons, Eichmann and Hitler. (Morse, The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism).
... the revolution in telecommunications greatly facilitated the exchange of ideas between dissident groups around the world. ...
Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, founder of the forbidden Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann paramilitary sports club, stands in the administrative court in Berlin, Feb. 10, 2016. Hoffmann, 78, is suing the Federal Ministry of the Interior for ordering temporary surveillance in 2012, which he considers unlawful.https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/karl-heinz-hoffmann-far-right
Last month, one of Germany’s most notorious neofascists, Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, made what he said would be his final public appearances, to discuss, "Judaism on German Soil Since Roman Times to the Enlightenment," "The Anti-Jewish Jews" and/or "The Political Meaning of Islam." Hoffmann is often portrayed in feature stories as something of a retired eccentric, residing with his wife, Franziska Birkmann, in Bavaria’s Ermreuth Castle, where he holds court and offers his perspective on a variety of issues, including social media, the abolition of churches and unions, and the “complete transformation of the economy.”
Rarely discussed outside German media is the neofascist group that Hoffman founded—the Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann (Hoffmann Sports Group). While the group’s possible connection to the Oktoberfest bombing of 1980 is common knowledge in German political circles, recent publications rarely reference Hoffmann’s more notorious activities, including his alleged facilitation of a working relationship with a group of Palestinian terrorists in Lebanon—part of a network that terrorized Western Europe throughout the 1970s and ’80s. A review of Hoffmann’s activities and associates reveals a tangled web in which violent neo-Nazi organizations on the far right made common cause with Palestinian liberation groups who were heroes of the far left.
Little of what is known about Karl Heinz-Hoffmann’s early years suggested that he would become a leading neofascist. He was born in Nuremberg in 1937, but later relocated with his family when Allied bombing raids targeted his city. In his early adult years, he trained as a porcelain painter, and attended school to become a graphic artist. Later, in the 1950s, he became involved in the German art scene. He then traveled extensively, and took an interest in cultural studies of Eastern countries.
The first indication that Hoffmann held radical views occurred in the 1960s, when Hoffmann began speaking publicly about history and politics and reportedly expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler. Later, he was refused entry into Austria for advocating the reunification with Germany (which had last taken place during the notorious Anschluss in 1938) and for supporting the ideas of National Socialism.
In 1974, despite fairly strict laws that prohibit Germans from forming or joining the Nazi Party or openly promoting Nazi philosophy, Hoffmann founded the Hoffmann Sports Group, one of several, private, paramilitary organizations that sprouted up in Germany in the generation after WWII. Hoffmann’s group soon had some 400 or so members who became known for sporting Nazi-like uniforms and practicing paramilitary maneuvers deep in German forests.
In the latter part of the 1970s, German government officials began to consider Hoffmann a potential threat. Since 1978, Hoffmann had been training his neofascist organization at Ermreuth Castle, which had already seen service as a training school for the Nazi SS. A raid on his compound in January 1980 turned up guns, bayonets, gas masks, an anti-aircraft gun, a 12-ton armored car, and, in the basement, a puma. The discovery of this mixed arsenal led to an official ban on the Hoffmann Sports Group by the West German government.
Today, it is easy to wonder why a heavily armed neofascist organization was not taken more seriously; at the time, the West German government considered left-wing terrorism the greater threat. In the 1970s, hijackings, hostage-takings, and the storming of embassies by left-wing groups were routine, so Western European governments largely saw far-right groups such as Hoffmann Sports Group as oddballs or hooligans.
A series of devastating terrorist acts linked to right-wing organizations soon caused European governments to take right-wing extremism more seriously. In August of 1980, a bomb exploded at a railway station in Bologna, Italy, killing 85 people. It was believed at the time to be the worst act of violence in Europe since the end of WWII. Just weeks later, in September of 1980, a bomb exploded at the Oktoberfest beer festival in Munich, Germany, killing 13. The following month, in October, a synagogue was bombed in Paris, killing four. And on Dec. 19, 1980, Jewish German community leader Shlomo Levin and his friend Frieda Poeschke were gunned down in their home. In each case cited above, official investigations concluded that far-right individuals and/or organizations were responsible, although explanations for some of these attacks remain controversial.
As far-right terrorism exploded in intensity and frequency, intense scrutiny of Hoffmann Sports Group led the West German government to suspect that the organization may have been tied to one or more of the 1980 terrorist attacks. For example, the main suspect of the Oktoberfest bombing, Gundolf Koehler, had been a member of Hoffmann Sports Group. Koehler died in the explosion, and thus could not be questioned. Hoffmann and several members soon were arrested in connection with the bombing but were released for lack of evidence directly implicating them.
The double murder of Levin and Poeschke also raised suspicions. A pair of glasses belonging to Franziska Birkmann, Hoffmann’s then-girlfriend and owner of Ermreuth Castle, was found at the scene of the murder. Der Spiegel reported that a 1976 police raid on Hoffmann had discovered beretta submachine guns with soldered barrels, and a forensic analysis found that the gun used to murder Levin and Poeschke was a beretta whose barrel had once been altered.
According to data from the Global Terrorism Database, in 1973 there were 326 terror attacks total in France, United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy. In 1979, there were nearly three times as many. A RAND study concluded:
Although from 1973 onwards there were sporadic attacks on Jewish persons, synagogues or cultural centers … these were infrequent … But during the first ten months of 1980 alone, French police recorded 122 incidents of violence and arson perpetrated by neo-fascists and another 66 “serious threats and acts of vandalism.” A week before the Rue Copernic bombing, five Jewish institutions in Paris (including a synagogue) were sprayed with machine-gun fire by FANE/FNE (far-right) terrorists.
Noting the terror wave sweeping Western Europe, a journalist named Claire Sterling questioned the prevailing theories on terrorism and its causes. In her 1981 book, The Terror Network, Sterling asserted that fascist, leftist, nationalist, and religious terror groups were all connected through illicit networks, and that the Soviet Union and other key instigators were indirectly facilitating attacks against democracies by providing these groups with arms, money, and training. Sterling’s view of terrorism as a sort of worldwide crime network contradicted popular theories of terrorism as principled and organic resistance to oppression.
According to Sterling’s findings, terrorist groups that did not necessarily share ideologies nevertheless often worked together. Her logic, as presented, was that maintaining the arms, finances, and communications necessary to conducting terror attacks while thwarting law enforcement incentivizes militant groups to cooperate on some level. Furthermore, both far-right terror organizations, like Hoffmann Sports Group, and far-left groups shared a desire to weaken the hegemony of the United States and its allies. The far right’s aim was to rid their countries of what they saw as excessive and unwarranted foreign influence from both the Soviet Union and NATO; in some cases they mimicked the language of Third World liberation movements, whose aims and methods could seem inseparable from their own.
* *
Shortly after Claire Sterling’s book was published, an event in Lebanon involving Hoffmann seemed to vindicate the journalist’s then-controversial theory of organizational links between far-right terror groups and liberation movements favored by the left. The Phalangists, a Lebanese Christian militia, presented four members of the Hoffmann Sports Group, and held a press conference, accusing the Palestinians of cooperating with neofascists. The Palestinians quickly countered by presenting in a press conference two Germans, Ulrich Bauer and Hans Eckner, who they claimed had defected from the Phalangists. However, Bauer and Eckner could not correctly describe the Phalangist symbol when challenged, and Eckner was identified as Uwe Berendt—the main suspect in the Levin double murder. Hoffmann had been suspected by West German intelligence of collaborating with Palestinian militants, but this incident was one of the most direct pieces of evidence to date that those accusations were true.
Hoffmann’s initial connection to the Palestinians was likely through Udo Albrecht. Albrecht was a German freelance criminal who fought with the Palestinians in the 1970 Black September uprising in Jordan against King Hussein, leading a militia of neofascists called the Freikorps Adolf Hitler. Sometime in the late 1970s, Albrecht introduced Hoffmann to Abu Ayad, a senior officer in the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and Hoffmann began to supply secondhand German vehicles, such as military trucks and Mercedes sedans to Palestinian militants in Lebanon. In the 1970s, Lebanon was a hub for international terrorist activity, hosting a diverse array of right- and left-wing groups from France, Germany, and Japan.
For a German neofascist leader like Hoffmann, cooperation with Palestinian militants was not an entirely foreign idea. The relationship between Hitler and Al-Husseini is well known, and there was further collaboration between the European far right and the Palestinians even after WWII. The Swiss financier Francois Genoud, who worked with the Nazis during WWII, was a major financial supporter of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), as well as a close friend of its founder, George Habbash, and of Black September founder Ali Hassan Salameh.
Near the end of his life, Genoud further confirmed suspicions of his involvement in terror activity, revealing to French journalist Pierre Péan that he had personally delivered the ransom letter to Lufthansa after Palestinian militants hijacked Lufthansa Flight 649, which had Joseph P. Kennedy II (former Massachusetts congressman and son of Robert F. Kennedy) on board. Lufthansa paid the $5 million ransom in full, without bargaining.
At times, German neofascists directly aided Palestinian terror attacks. For example, Der Spiegel revealed in 2012 that two German neofascists, Willi Pohl and Max Abramowski, aided Black September in the Munich massacre of 1972 by transporting the terrorists and helping them acquire passports. Like Hoffmann, Pohl’s initial connection to the Palestinians was through selling secondhand vehicles to them in Lebanon. In 1985, English skinhead Michael Davison and two PLO terrorists murdered three Israelis on a yacht near Larnaca, Cyprus.
In 1981, Hoffmann Sports Group began to unravel. Four members escaped a PLO camp and began cooperating with authorities against Hoffmann, complaining of hideous mistreatment, torture, and exploitation. Then in June 1981, Hoffmann was arrested in a Frankfurt airport, en route to Damascus, and put on trial for the murder of Shlomo Levin and Frieda Poeschke. The court ruled that it could not prove Hoffmann and Birkmann were involved, and Hoffmann accused his associate, Uwe Berendt, of committing the murder. Berendt had allegedly committed suicide in a PLO camp in Lebanon, and thus never stood trial. In June 1986, Hoffmann was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison relating to his neofascist activities and mistreatment of comrades in Lebanon. Birkmann received seven years in prison for her involvement.
Despite the Hoffmann Sports Group’s disintegration, other connected groups carried on its destructive legacy. A German neofascist named Odfried Hepp, a former member of the Sports Group, reportedly traveled to Lebanon to receive training in terrorist activities by PLO members. After the breakup of Hoffmann’s group in 1982, Hepp and a fellow neofascist, Walther Kexel, founded the Kexel-Hepp Group, and for a year, carried out deadly bombings against NATO military bases throughout Germany. After being arrested in 1983 and subsequently escaping, Hepp was rearrested in 1985 by French authorities while entering an apartment belonging to a member of the Palestine Liberation Front. Palestinian hijackers demanded Hepp’s release during the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking on Oct. 7, 1985—the same hijacking that led to the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled Jewish American and World War II veteran, whose limp body was hurled overboard along with his wheelchair.
By 1986, both Karl-Heinz Hoffmann and Odfried Hepp were in prison but not for long. In 1989, a German court ruled that Hoffmann had plausibly shown that he renounced his past and he was released. Four years later, Hepp completed his sentence and was released.
* *
Since his release from prison, Hoffmann has publicly occupied himself in a number of activities, including real estate development and breeding the rare wooly Mangalica pig. He even set up a cultural foundation with the help of 130,000 euros from the Free State of Saxony at an estate called Kohren-Sahlis, which he put up for sale online in 2016 at an initial asking price of 666,666 euros.
Hoffmann continues to maintain his and his wife’s innocence in connection with both the Oktoberfest bombing and murder of Shlomo Levin. He expresses his ideas and muses on his past at public appearances throughout Germany, in regular blogs posted on a self-managed website, and on his YouTube channel, which he updates fairly regularly with help from his wife and cameraman, who shoots the videos in their Ermreuth Castle home where he trained his neofascist paramilitary group. One video even featured Odfried Hepp as a special guest.
One would hope that Hoffmann Sports Group and the neofascist terror network would be an artifact of the unique political situation of their time; however, connections between the European far right and Middle Eastern terror groups persist. In 2017, a delegation of the German far-right Der Dritte Weg party (The Third Way) met with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The Jerusalem Post later revealed that Hezbollah and the Assad regime had a joint PayPal account with Der Dritte Weg party, linked to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement. While PayPal shut down the account in January 2019, this did not end the relationship. In March of 2019, a delegation of European far-right politicians traveled to Beirut and met with Ammar Al-Moussawi, Hezbollah’s foreign affairs chief. Delegates stressed the need for stability to prevent an influx of refugees into Europe, echoing the desire for separation and isolation between Europe and the Middle East.
While it can be difficult to navigate the complex ideology and motives that cause far-right and neofascist Europeans to simultaneously despair of Middle Eastern immigration to Europe and cooperate with extremist groups from the Middle East, Karl-Heinz Hoffmann and his Sports Group show how interests between these two groups can converge in bloody ways. Both Hoffmann and Hepp’s groups and the Palestinian extremists they trained with sought to rid their countries of what they saw as excessive foreign influence. Using the language of liberation from foreign “occupation,” today’s alt-right, neofascists, and Middle Eastern extremists seek to rid their countries of what they see as a rootless global liberal hegemony while looking backward toward an idealized ancient past, which they hope to achieve through radicalization and terrorist violence.
A violent criminal suspected of being the main link between West German neo-Nazis and the Palestine Liberation Organization’s El Fatah faction is believed to be hiding somewhere in East Germany, according to the federal prosecutor in Karlsruhe.https://www.jta.org/archive/criminal-linking-neo-nazis-plo-believed-to-be-in-east-germany
Federal sources said Sunday that the East German authorities were cooperating in the search for Udo Albrecht, who is wanted for a series of violent crimes, including bank robbery.
According to the prosecution, he fled West Germany in 1981 and found haven in East Germany, which was governed by a Communist regime until earlier this year.
Albrecht, who has boasted of direct access to PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat, is believed to have used PLO facilities in Lebanon to train West German neo-Nazis.
___
Leader of Neo-nazi Group in Germany Surrenders to Police
December 10, 1981
The object of the manhunt was Volker Heidel, 27, described by police as leader of the Peoples Socialist Movement which has been agitating for years against Jews and foreign workers in West Germany. Two members of the group were killed in a gun battle with police near Munich last month and several others were arrested. One of the latter had received training in terrorist tactics by El Fatah in Lebanon. The gang was on its way to rob a bank when waylaid by the police.https://www.jta.org/archive/leader-of-neo-nazi-group-in-germany-surrenders-to-police
Heidel went underground. Police searched his home in Lueneburg, Lower Saxony in the course of a crackdown on neo-Nazi groups after the arms caches were discovered. A score of books and pamphlets containing Nazi propaganda material was confiscated.
Heidel, who publishes a neo-Nazi newspaper, The Observer of Lower Saxony, has a long record of arrests for violent acts. Most recently he drew a two year and nine month sentence for attacks on court buildings in Hannover and Flensburg. He appeared at his trial dressed in black shirt and trousers, a facsimile of the Nazi SS uniform. He was released from prison last March.
____
University of Southampton
MS241/10 Alphabetical sequence MS241/10/1/1 Helsinki Accord
MS241/10/6/1 -1981-6
PLO/Neo Nazi links - press cuttings, in English, French, German and Hebrew script:
Zionist Organisation of America correspondence and press release, regarding a White House meeting discussing Yasser Arafat and international terrorist groups, July 20, 1983;https://cdn.southampton.ac.uk/assets/imported/transforms/content-block/UsefulDownloads_Download/515775FBD5DF4CD68183DB4B28779001/MS241_(10).pdf
Karl Heinz Hoffmann and Wehrsportegruppe Hoffmann; 'Quarterly Report Canadian Jewish Congress', "Ultra-Right and Palestinian Terrorism in Europe", by Erol Araf; press reports of training of German terrorists by PLO personnel;
extract from Paul Wilkinson article in 'Fascism Now'; article, in French, 'L'OLP et le Terrorisme International';
Mehmet Agca - the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II;
the murder of Shlomo Lewin; printed unattributed confidential report, "PLO Ties with Radical Rightist Movements in Europe", 1981;
Odfried Hepp.
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'Wake up Hitler, there are still people to burn,' in Palestinian textbooks
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The report states that with 133 teachers and educators promoting violence and hatred, this kind of behavior is systemic and deeply rooted, with practically no oversight mechanisms to stop it.https://www.ynetnews.com/article/skjetv1eh
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New York Times 'Takes Action' vs. Pro-Hitler, Pro-Terror Freelancers ...
Aug 24, 2022 — Pro-Hitler, Pro-Terror Freelancers Due to HonestReporting Probe ... two more Palestinians who lauded Adolf Hitler and Palestinian terrorism..
https://honestreporting.com/honestreporting-forensic-work-exposes-more-new-york-times-freelancers-who-praised-hitler-palestinian-terror/
Note the following:
Despite the PLO’s efforts to appear to be “only anti-Zionist, and not anti-Jewish, it has manifested its hatred for Jews time and again through its activities and propaganda.
PLO hijacker Lila Khaled stated in her autobiography: “At first I admired Hitler because I thought he was the enemy of the Jews.”
I thought they sent Jane Goodall down there to pacify the paleosimians or something
Great resources. Saved.
Lol
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Schoenberg, H. O. (1989). A Mandate for Terror: The United Nations and the PLO. United States: Shapolsky Publishers, p. 415:
Such was the case in the shooting of the crew of a yacht at Larnaca, Cyprus, which was the work of British neo-Nazi Ian Davison and two Palestinian Arabs, Elias Nassif and Usama al-Tuqan, all of whom were members of Arafat's personal bodyguard / hit squad known as Force 17
Ping.
Great information. All should read it.
In a 1961 report of Arabs posing as students urging Arabs to join 'George Lincoln Rockwell's 'American Nazi Party' activities and other Antisemitism, recently: the so-called "Arab Information Center" increased the flow of propaganda mailings to Arab students. The latest is a pamphlet "Exodus: a distortion of truth." Instruction were given that: "crimes"[sic] against Palestinian Arabs were (supposedly) worse than any "alleged"[sic] atrocities by Nazis against Jews.
Arab Propagandists Pose As Students. By Milton Friedman. The Canadian Jewish Chronicle Mar 10, 1961.
Washington -- Participation of Arab students, foreign nationals, in George Lincoln Rockwel's "American Nazi Party" activities and other Antisemitism, has attracted attention of Congressmen. Arabs here, on temporary student visas, recently circulated notices urguing fellow Arabs to "join the American Nazi Party in its efforts to stamp out an insidious group" (American Jewry)... The so-called "Arab Information Center" increased the flow of propaganda mailings to Arab students. The latest is a pamphlet "Exodus: a distortion of truth." Instruction were given on the line to be taken. It was... that ... "crimes"[sic] against Palestinian Arabs were worse than any "alleged"[sic] atrocities by Nazis against Jews.
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Erwin Schönborn, in the 1950s' was West Berlin’s most active Jew-baiter. Distributed Nazi propaganda, primarily in Arabic in 1976 Innsbruk Olympics and held Nazi-Arab events. He was chairman of various neo-Nazi splinter groups and of a 'German-Arab Society.' played the "anti-imperialism" spiel. He was chairman of various neo-Nazi splinter groups and of a 'German-Arab Society.' Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Friday, October 4, 1957
Berlin's Most Rabid Anti-Semite Gets Eight Month Sentence. Berlin, October 3. (JTA) — West Germany's continuing struggle with the remnants of the Hitler era was marked this week by a jail sentence for West Berlin's most rabid anti-Semite of the post war era. Erwin Schoenborn, 43, was sentenced to eight months in jail by the Goettingen district court which found him guilty of libeling Dr. Eugene Gerstenmaier, the Speaker of the last Bundestag. Schoenborn, who is chairman of various neo-Nazi splinter groups and of a 'German-Arab Society' which has chapters in several cities, was convicted of calling Dr. Gerstenmaier a vile traitor, during a series of small town political meetings.
The epithet was used because Dr. Gerstenmaier, during the Hitler regime, had been sentenced by a People's Court for failing to betray an an anti-Nazi movement. Meanwhile, the "German Social Movement," which has also relations with the Arab League, held a convention this week in Freudenstadt and featured numerous addresses, most of them marked by anti-Semitic innuendoes, delivered by a number of open devoteees of Hitler. Chief among these was, Karl Priester, former Hitler Youth and S.S. leader who heads now the movement and edits its anti-Semitic monthly magazine.
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In 1959, Arab Students were blamed for Anti-Jewish Agitation in Germany.
Arab Students Blamed for Anti-jewish Agitation in Germany, JTA, March 24, 1959. PDF No West German government will ever again condone anti-Semitism and it is a group of Arab students that is now a main source of anti-Jewish agitation in West Germany, Jakob Altmaier, a Jewish member of the Bundestag, today told a press conference here. Altmaier said hundreds of Arab students now enrolled at German universities came to Germany because, for political reasons, they no longer go to Paris or London to study. In Germany, he said, the Arabs spread anti-Jewish propaganda and strive to end the flow of reparations. Altmaier blamed the United States for clearing and employing ex-Nazis in a belief they were reliable anti-Communists. He claimed that the Federal and local governing bodies in West Germany strongly oppose anti-Semitism. Recent anti-Jewish incidents should not be regarded as typical of the nation, he said. He characterized the German people as desiring a return of Jews to Germany to enrich the country’s cultural life.
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In April 1964, it was charged: in many instances Arab agents and agencies are linked with neo-Nazi and Fascist groups equally committed to virulent anti-Semitism.
PDF.
The national executive council of the Zionist Organization of America ruling body of the organization between annual conventions, today unanimously approved at the final session of a two-day meeting here a declaration presented by its president, Dr. Max Nussbaum, summoning American Zionists to rally to the defense of the Zionist movement in the face of “the most massive barrage of attacks by its enemies since the establishment of the State of Israel. “ The adoption of the declaration, and a strongly worded warning by Dr. Emanuel Neumann of New York, member of the American Section of the Jewish Agency for Israel and president of the World Union of General Zionists, against what he termed “the export of anti-Jewish propaganda from Cairo to various countries of the Eastern and Western hemispheres” with emphasis on the urgency for the American Jewish community to act on this “sinister aspect of extremist Arab nationalism” highlighted today’s session of the executive council attended by some 200 Zionist leaders from all parts of the country. Jacques Torczyner, chairman of the Council, presided.
The major addresses by Dr. Nussbaum, Dr. Neumann and other Zionist leaders at the session, calling for vigorous measures to counteract the large-scale anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish propaganda spearheaded by Arab emissaries, was touched off by the public addresses delivered by King Hussein of Jordan during his current American visit, who called for an “agonizing reappraisal by American Jews of their attitude towards Zionism” and attacked the Zionist movement as a “movement of aggression. “ In his declaration, Dr. Nussbaum asserted that “American Zionists cannot and will not remain silent in the face of such attacks” describing Zionism as “an ideal which is rooted in Jewish history and Jewish religious tradition for over 2000 years. ” In order that the “American people may have a full understanding of its true aims and purposes, ” he reiterated the principles and ideology of the Zionist movement.
NEUMANN CHARGES ARAB AGENTS ARE LINKED WITH NEO-NAZIS, FASCISTS
Dr. Neumann, in his address, charging Arab nationalist leaders with having “embarked upon an anti-Jewish policy, ” asserted: “It is directed in part against their own Jewish nationals, regardless of their attitude towards Zionism; and against Jews in general, in other parts of the world. They do not shrink from using the poisonous weapon of anti-Semitic propaganda.” Dr. Neumann further charged that “Cairo has become the center of a planned and concerted anti-Jewish campaign, pursued with the participation of virtually all the Arab states” adding that “they have in fact become the heirs of Nazi Germany by raising anti-Semitism to the status of official policy; and their anti-Jewish propaganda is exported to various countries in the Eastern and Western hemispheres. In many instances Arab agents and agencies are linked with neo-Nazi and Fascist groups equally committed to virulent anti-Semitism. Neither the Western democracies nor even the Jewish communities in the Free World have as yet reacted in any significant measure to this new menace, ” he said. Mr. Torczyner cited what he described “the growing anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda which is being conducted at American colleges and universities by thousands of Arab students.” He charged that “this propaganda must not be left unchecked as it injects the poison of bigotry and anti-Semitism in the minds of American youth. ” He pointed out that this propaganda by Arab students “is considerably aided by slick and multi-colored publications mailed to the colleges and libraries by Arab Information Centers with headquarters in New York and branch offices in Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas and Canada. Dr. Sidney Marks, director of the ZOA, presented a report on the progress of all phases of ZOA activities encompassing membership, education programing, youth, world Zionist affairs and public information.
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Still in 1970, it was charged: 'Arab League has links with Neo-nazi and Fascist groups in South America and Europe.' Arab League Has Links with Neo-nazi and Fascist Groups in South America and Europe, JTA, February 11, 1970. PDF Arab links with neo-Nazi and fascist groups in South America and Europe were described in a pamphlet published today by the Labor Friends of Israel. The pamphlet quoted the Arab League representative in Argentina, Hussein Triqi, as having stated at a press conference that the League maintained close relations with several neo-Nazi movements, including the blatantly anti-Semitic Taquara. The Arab League representative in Bonn, Dr. Hassan Fakoussa, reportedly said that he supported the neo-Nazis with large funds at his disposal.
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Latin anerica:
Edy Kaufman, Edy. Shapira, Yoram. Barromi, Joel. Israeli-Latin American Relations. United States: Transaction Books, 1979, p. 87n167.
Cooperation with Latin American antisemitic groups has long been an Arab tactic. A curious result of this policy occurred at the United Nations in 1962. Ahmed Shukairy, then head of the Saudi Arabian delegation, openly praised the Argentine Nazi group Tacuara. The Argentine delegate expressed dismay. Another example of cooperation between pro-Nazi groups and the Arabs is the Chilean publication Cruz Gamada (swastika), most of which is devoted to "Palestine, Arab land" and "Communist[sic] Jewish [sic] infiltration," or "Capitalist ... Another curious result of this sort of collusion took place in Buenos Aires in 1964. At a public meeting called to express solidarity with the Arab states , the Arab League delegate was greeted with the shout "Expel the Jews to Israel" and with the Nazi salute.
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