Demolition company logo features Star of David being smashed by a hammer.
Here at DemolitionNews Towers, we have made an unconscious decision that all our stories follow the same basic rules as polite dinner party conversation: no sex, religion or politics. But we have just picked up a story from the Associated Press that forces us to break one of our own unwritten rules.
According to the story, the town of Jamel in Germany has been taken over by neo-Nazis. And one of the key reasons is the presence of Sven Krueger, a representative of the far-right German National Democratic Party who also runs a demolition company from home near the town, its logo featuring a man smashing a Star of David with a sledgehammer.
Officials say Krueger has been known to authorities for small-time criminal activity, but had stayed off the radar in recent years after turning to politics. That changed this a week ago, however, when Krueger was arrested on charges of receiving stolen property and weapons violations after a five-month investigation.
In a search of his home, authorities confiscated power tools they believe stolen and a submachine gun with 200 rounds of ammunition.
A few days before the arrest, a pit bull and a German Shepherd roamed the fenced yard of Krueger’s home in the middle of town, and an NPD poster with the pledge “we keep our word” hung from a blue industrial trash bin out front, filled with waste from his demolition work. A woman smoking a cigarette in the yard said she didn’t know where Krueger could be found.
His demolition company’s main building is about six miles (10 kilometers) away, and doubles as the regional NPD headquarters.
It is set behind a six-foot (two-meter) wooden fence topped with razor wire; a guard tower shines a floodlight at night, and dogs bark incessantly through the padlocked steel gate. The black-white-and-red German imperial flag used in the last years of the Kaiser flies overhead — a common neo-Nazi substitute for the outlawed swastika banner. Through the fence on an inside door the smashed Star of David logo can be seen.
Read the full story here.
