BERLIN - A German Jewish lawmaker spoke on Friday of the "nightmarish" discovery his name was on a hit-list found in a neo-Nazi hideout, as Germany struggled to come to terms with news a right-wing trio had been killing immigrants.
Jerzy Montag, a Polish-born member of parliament for the Greens, told Reuters he assumed he been put on the neo-Nazi list because of his criticism of right-wing extremism and his work supporting minority groups in Germany and Israel.
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"It's a nightmarish feeling," said Montag, who has been a member of the Bundestag in Berlin since 2002.
"I try not to think about why I was on their list because it's not going to help me now. But it doesn't feel good."
Germans have been shocked this week by news three neo-Nazis had been killing immigrant shopkeepers for years and police had failed to connect the murders to the right-wing extremists.
Two of the neo-Nazis committed suicide earlier this month after a botched bank robbery and a third is believed to have set their flat on fire. The three went underground after a bungled attempt to arrest them in 1998.
Police found Montag's name on a computer stick recovered from the rubble which contained a hit-list of 88 people - "88" is a neo-Nazi rallying cry for "Heil Hitler" because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has called the existence of the National Socialist Underground cell a disgrace. Its members are suspected of killing at least nine immigrants, eight Turks and a Greek, and a police woman, between 2000 and 2007.
"I'm assuming the right-wing terrorism is made up of more than these three people," said Montag, who is often on German talk shows and speaks with a Polish accent. "I think this whole issue of right-wing extremism is going to stay on the agenda."
Nazi history makes right-wing militancy a sensitive subjectGermany's Nazi past makes right-wing militancy a particularly sensitive
subject, yet experts have long warned of extremism among disenchanted
young people in eastern regions of the country where unemployment is
high and job prospects poor.
"I'm not at all surprised that
right-wing extremists are killing people," said Bernd Wagner, an expert
on the far-right who set up an organization to help extremists start new
lives away from neo-Nazis.
"It's still shocking to me that this
group has operated in this violent way for such a long time. It's scary.
I'm not happy about politicians who remain silent at a time like this."