Right-wing rally protests ‘cult of guilt’

ABOUT 3,000 supporters of a German extreme-right party protested in Berlin yesterday against the “cult of guilt” they say was imposed on the nation after the Nazis were defeated 60 years ago.

The National Democratic Party supporters were ringed by police on central Alexanderplatz square, some waving party flags in red, white and black the colours used by the Nazis and imperial Germany. Sunday was the anniversary of Nazi Germany's surrender on May 8, 1945.

The National Democratic Party dismissed organisers of official remembrances on its website as "occupation collaborators and a group of professional Jews", and called for "an end to the cult of guilt."

Officials refused the demonstrators permission to march to Germany's new Holocaust memorial, a block away from the Brandenburg Gate, under a new law banning gatherings that insult the memory of Nazi victims.

"This is a disgrace," German Interior Minister Otto Schily said of the rally by a party he has accused of reviving Nazi ideology and symbols.

Meanwhile, several thousand counter-demonstrators headed toward the far-right rally on Berlin's Unter den Linden boulevard to try to block the planned march. Police sealed off much of central Berlin to prevent clashes.

Nearby, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and other top politicians attended a wreath-laying ceremony at Berlin's monument to the victims of war and Nazism, which contains the remains of an unknown soldier and an unknown concentration camp victim.