Jewish Leaders Outraged by Hitler Praise

The Central Council of Jews in Germany plans to bring charges against a neo-Nazi politician for praising Adolf Hitler as "a great statesman," the council's president told a local newspaper on Monday. "We are going to court because this is an incitement to racial hatred," the Berlin newspaper Der Tagespiegel quoted Paul Spiegel as saying. Klaus-Jürgen Menzel from the right-wing extremist National Democratic Party (NPD) on Thursday told ARD public television: "The Führer was always a great statesman, perhaps one of the greatest we ever had." Menzel is a member of the regional parliament in the eastern state of Saxony. The Central Council of Jews plans to bring charges under a law amended by the Bundestag lower house of parliament in March to read that anybody who justifies or glorifies National Socialism endangers the public order. The crime can be punished by up to three years in prison. The law was redrafted to allow authorities to ban the demonstration organized by neo-Nazis every year in honor of Rudolf Hess, one of the most powerful figures in Nazi Germany as Hitler's deputy.