A neo-Nazi gang suspected of murdering 10 people developed their own version of the board game Monopoly featuring death camps and gas works.
Called "Pogromly" and intended for other far-right extremists the game has the names of four Nazi concentration camps instead of the railway stations found on the traditional Monopoly board. Players have the chance to buy Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald and Ravensbruck, with each camp costing 4,000 reichsmarks, the currency used in Hitler's Germany.
A number of sets of the game were discovered in a garage used by the gang the self-styled National Socialist Underground amongst bomb-making equipment and unused nail bombs last month.
Players start on a square emblazoned with a swastika and also have the chance of landing on a numbers of squares marked with the SS emblem. The board also comes with pictures of Hitler and sinister looking Jews. It is thought the game is based loosely on events surrounding Kristallnacht. On the night of November 8, 1938, the Nazi's unleashed a violent pogrom against German Jews, destroying hundreds of synagogues and Jewish-owned business, and arresting 30,000 people, many of whom were sent to concentration camps.
The gang, apparently, produced dozens of Pogromly sets, which retailed on the underground far-right scene for about £42, as a way of supplementing their finances from 2000 to 2011. The games were sold by an associate of the gang Andre K., who has since been arrested, although, apparently, they suspected he was pocketing too much of the proceeds.
A report by the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine said that gang members called other extremists to complain about the lack of money they were receiving from their colleague.
Pogromly comes as the latest lurid twist in the scandal surrounding the operations of the National Socialist Underground. Despite murdering nine men of immigrant background and a policewoman between 2000 and 2007, and conducting 14 bank robberies, police remained oblivious to the gang's existence.
It was not exposed until a botched bank raid last month led to two members committing suicide and the survivor handing herself into the police.
Daily Telegraph
Showing posts with label National Socialist Underground. Show all posts
Showing posts with label National Socialist Underground. Show all posts
December 07, 2011
November 15, 2011
Members of murderous neo-Nazi gang linked to German secret service
Germany's intelligence services have revealed that they are investigating whether members of a brutal neo-Nazi terror gang, responsible for a series of bomb attacks and cold blooded murders, were double agents who also covertly worked as secret service informers.
Suspicions of an extraordinary intelligence service link with the far-right group have emerged following a spectacular police raid in eastern Germany last week, which tracked down a neo-Nazi terrorist cell that had eluded police and prosecutors for more than a decade. The gang, which called itself the National Socialist Underground, murdered a policewoman and nine immigrant street vendors – who were shot in the face in broad daylight – carried out two bomb attacks which injured dozens, and robbed 14 banks to finance its operations.
The attacks were among the most brutal carried out by a neo-Nazi organisation in Germany since the Second World War. The Interior Minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, described them as a "new dimension" of far right terror. Gang members left behind DVDs in which they boasted about their murders and showed the bloodstained corpses of their victims, alongside bizarre images of the Pink Panther cartoon figure.
Yesterday Chancellor Angela Merkel described the activities of the gang as a "disgrace for Germany" and pledged that her government would take all steps to fully investigate why the far-right extremist group had been able to operate for so long without being caught. Last week police discovered the bodies of Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt, both in their 30s, in a burned out caravan in the east German city of Eisenach, after they were called to investigate a bank robbery in the town. The two, ringleaders of the gang, had carried out the robbery and subsequently committed suicide, police said.
A third suspect, a woman identified as Beate Zschäpe, 36, surrendered to police in the eastern town of Zwickau after blowing up her rented flat in an attempt to destroy incriminating evidence. A fourth suspect was arrested near Hanover on Sunday.
However, it has since emerged that investigators found a pistol in the ruins of the building linking the gang to the murders of one Greek and eight Turkish street vendors in separate incidents across Germany, and also highly sensitive intelligence documents suggesting that gang members may also have worked as secret service "moles".
According to information supplied to the Bild newspaper, police discovered so-called "legal illegal" intelligence service documents belonging to the cell members in the ruins of Zschäpe's apartment. The Interior Minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, said investigations so far had not found any evidence of the national intelligence services having recruited members of the cell.
Independent
Suspicions of an extraordinary intelligence service link with the far-right group have emerged following a spectacular police raid in eastern Germany last week, which tracked down a neo-Nazi terrorist cell that had eluded police and prosecutors for more than a decade. The gang, which called itself the National Socialist Underground, murdered a policewoman and nine immigrant street vendors – who were shot in the face in broad daylight – carried out two bomb attacks which injured dozens, and robbed 14 banks to finance its operations.
The attacks were among the most brutal carried out by a neo-Nazi organisation in Germany since the Second World War. The Interior Minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, described them as a "new dimension" of far right terror. Gang members left behind DVDs in which they boasted about their murders and showed the bloodstained corpses of their victims, alongside bizarre images of the Pink Panther cartoon figure.
Yesterday Chancellor Angela Merkel described the activities of the gang as a "disgrace for Germany" and pledged that her government would take all steps to fully investigate why the far-right extremist group had been able to operate for so long without being caught. Last week police discovered the bodies of Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt, both in their 30s, in a burned out caravan in the east German city of Eisenach, after they were called to investigate a bank robbery in the town. The two, ringleaders of the gang, had carried out the robbery and subsequently committed suicide, police said.
A third suspect, a woman identified as Beate Zschäpe, 36, surrendered to police in the eastern town of Zwickau after blowing up her rented flat in an attempt to destroy incriminating evidence. A fourth suspect was arrested near Hanover on Sunday.
However, it has since emerged that investigators found a pistol in the ruins of the building linking the gang to the murders of one Greek and eight Turkish street vendors in separate incidents across Germany, and also highly sensitive intelligence documents suggesting that gang members may also have worked as secret service "moles".
According to information supplied to the Bild newspaper, police discovered so-called "legal illegal" intelligence service documents belonging to the cell members in the ruins of Zschäpe's apartment. The Interior Minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, said investigations so far had not found any evidence of the national intelligence services having recruited members of the cell.
Independent
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