According to German intelligence, these meetings — at which former Nazis speak about their time in the Hitler Youth and Waffen-SS or imprisonment in Soviet POW camps — are growing in significance within the German extreme right scene.
This is particularly true in the former East Germany — including in Chemnitz, a focal point of extreme right activity in Germany in recent years.
In August 2018, mobs shouting “Foreigners, out!” hunted immigrants through the streets, destroyed a kosher restaurant, and beat up its owner.
Many of these former Waffen-SS members are now in their 90s and only around a half-dozen of them act as zeitzeugen (“contemporary witnesses”).
Nonetheless, German intelligence is concerned about their hold over younger neo-Nazis.
Its fear, as the report outlines, is that these talks act as a gateway for those attracted to the extreme right and, though not neo-Nazis today, may be radicalised by the former Waffen-SS members’s testimonies.
These meetings legitimise the narratives of former Nazis, glorifying the work of Nazi armed forces and presenting their actions as a defensive measure against external aggression.
They also transmit this distorted narrative from one generation to the next. Examples of such “witnesses” named in the report include Klaus Grotjahn, 91, ex-member of the 11th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division ‘Nordland’, and Richard Neubrech, 92, formerly of the 3rd SS Panzer Division ‘Totenkopf’, which took part in the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in April and May 1943.
Earlier this year the German broadcaster NDR profiled another, named as Paul P, who volunteered to join the elite Waffen-SS in 1944.
He was said to be proud of his service and continues to display his wartime medals in his home. Paul P told NDR he served as a watchman for inmates at a concentration camp. He speaks regularly to meetings of right-wing extremists, not only in Chemnitz and Dresden but also Switzerland and Hungary, giving 15 talks in 2018 alone.
Karl Münter, a member of the 12th SS Panzer Division ‘Hitlerjugend’, was described by the German state broadcaster ARD as a “hero in extreme right circles” for his wartime activities.
His division was responsible for reprisal killings in France in 1944 and 1945, including the Ascq massacre, during which 86 civilians were rounded up and murdered.
Mr Münter reportedly last spoke at an extreme-right gathering in the state of Thüringen in November 2018.
