ATHENS, Greece (JTA) — A Greek lawmaker with Jewish ancestry used Nazi imagery to warn colleagues about what would happen if the ultranationalist Golden Dawn party came to power.
Anna Asimakopoulou, the spokeswoman for the ruling New Democracy party, made the comments last week during a stormy debate in Parliament on lifting the immunity from several jailed Golden Dawn leaders.
“If this man were in power, not only would my mother, myself and my son not be allowed to enter his shop, but they would put us on trains and send us to concentration camps before sending us to the crematoria,” she said of Christos Pappas, the deputy leader of Golden Dawn.
Pappas had pointed out that Asimakopoulou had an American-Jewish mother. He also said that Asimakopoulou had been allowed to shop in his store, thus proving that Golden Dawn was not anti-Semitic but only anti-Zionist. In response, an angry Asimakopoulou asked what kind of lawmaker raises the ethnic and religious backgrounds of other parliamentarians.
The Greek government has led a crackdown on Golden Dawn in recent months, jailing several of its leaders and accusing them of running a criminal organization. But the effort has not diminished public support for the group, which has been blamed for dozens of violent attacks on immigrants in Greece.
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