France: Neo-Nazis from around Europe celebrate Hitler's birthday

The discovery that authorities did nothing to prevent a neo-Nazi assembly honoring the memory of Adolf Hitler in France has sparked controversy. The meeting took place last weekend in Alsace.

French online news service Metronews reported on 24 April that a high representative of the local administration insisted the neo-Nazis had the right to assemble, which has particularly outraged people. As many as 200 neo-Nazis from France, Germany, and other European countries gathered last Sunday, 20 April, in the social hall of the village of Oltingue to celebrate Hitler’s birthday (20 April 1889).

The mayor of the village of 700 insists he knew nothing about the celebration and said the hall had been rented for a further-unspecified birthday party per the applicable rules. After a local businessman warned police of the event, 20 officers arrived on the scene but did not intervene, according to the Interior Ministry, because they did not observe any overt provocations (such as Nazi flags, for example) and because no violence was committed.  

The ministry has assured the public that had authorities known in advance the assembly was to take place, they would have banned it. The director of the cabinet of the head of the Haut-Rhin department also insisted that the authorities had no way to effectively intervene because they only learned of the event at the last moment.

The department bureaucrat admitted that a celebration of Hitler’s birthday in the area had been announced several months prior online, but said no one knew where the event was supposed to take place. "We got the information once the assembly was already underway. Police officers then patrolled the scene and found no disturbances of public order. They had the right to assemble," the director was quoted by Metronews as saying. 

The case in the village, which is not far from France’s border with Germany and Switzerland, especially shocked Roger Karoutchi, vice-chair of the main opposition conservative party, the UMO. He sent an open letter to French Prime Minister Manuel Valls condemning the fact that police did not intervene against the celebration of Hitler’s memory.