A far-right German politician had his clothes stolen while swimming in a lake, with the thief reportedly shouting: “This is no swimming area for Nazis.”
Alexander Gauland, who is co-leader of Alternative for Germany (AfD), was forced to walk partially-naked through the streets, accompanied by a police officer, after someone absconded with his clothes as he bathed in the waters just outside Berlin.
Potsdam police have yet to find the culprit and said they had not ruled out a “political motivation” behind the theft, according to the DPA news agency.
An image of the 77-year-old in his swimming shorts and shoes has been shared thousands of times on social media.
Mr Gauland is a controversial figure in Germany and Europe, who has said Germany needs to stop apologising for the Second World War, and should even be proud of the Nazi soldiers’ actions.
He had said: “If the French are rightly proud of their emperor and the Britons of Nelson and Churchill, we have the right to be proud of the achievements of the German soldiers in two world wars.”
He also once called for a ban on Muslims entering Germany, and referred to the Holocaust, the systematic murdering of six million people throughout Europe, as “a speck of birds**t in 1,000 years of glorious German history”.
The International Auschwitz Committee, a Holocaust survivors’ organisation, called his remarks “undignified and unbearable”.
Despite the leader’s divisive views, the AfD has steadily grown in recent years and has become Germany’s third-largest political party.
The Nazi’s rule between 1933 and 1945 is still a sensitive subject in Germany. Monuments to the millions who died as a result of extreme anti-semitism and the Second World War can be found throughout Germany and displaying a swastika is still illegal to this day.
The AfD party has seized upon a recent surge in nationalism within Germany and contested the idea that Germans should feel guilt about their country’s past to gain supporters from across the political specturm.
