RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA) — Brazilian police seized Nazi material during a joint operation in five cities.
More than 300 objects including photos, DVDs, books, knives, clothes bearing swastikas and three homemade bombs were seized Monday in Rio Grande do Sul state in an operation to arrest members of a neo-Nazi group called New Land.
According to local police, the group was planning to attack Jews and gays in the region.
"Until now they had been doing Nazi propaganda only, but now they started to attack," said Paulo Cesar Jardim, a police official from the state’s capital city of Porto Alegre.
Jardim added that synagogues and gay-rights demonstrations allegedly were planned as the group’s targets.
"They declared they would rather kill several Jews and gays at the same time," he said.
Rio Grande do Sul state is one of the major sites of anti-Semitic attacks in Brazil. It is Brazil’s third largest Jewish community, with 12,000 Jews, and has a large population of German descendants.
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