The State of Rhineland-Palatinate banned yesterday the German Reich Party and its affiliated youth group, the Young German Comradeship.
The state Ministry of the Interior, in announcing the ban, said that the party was unconstitutional because it was the successor of the Socialist Reich Party which was banned as a neo-Nazi organization by the Federal Supreme Court in 1952.
Hans Schikora, the German Reich party deputy in the state Diet, withdrew yesterday from his post as state party chairman. He has been accused of making pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic speeches. He had been a functionary of the Socialist Reich party.
(The government of the Federal Republic of Germany in a special message today to the American Jewish Committee has given assurances that the German State Ministers of Culture will take steps “to ensure that more is done in schools to further enlighten the young people” on the subjects of Hitler and Nazism. The message which was signed by Wilhelm Grewe, German Ambassador to the United States, on behalf of the German Government, stated that “it is our conviction that everything possible should be done to teach contemporary history in the lower as well as the upper grades.”)
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