Schroeder urges Germans to fight racism

Schroeder: 'Duty to fight racism'

NORDHAUSEN, Germany -- Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has toured a former Nazi concentration camp in east Germany and said it is the country's historical duty to stand up to racist extremism.

"Places like these show where racism and criminal ideologies can lead," he said on Wednesday after visiting the memorial at the former Mittelbau-Dora camp near Nordhausen as part of his tour of the former communist region.

Schroeder was shown around the site by a former Dutch prisoner, 76-year-old Albert van Dijk, who was sent there at the age of 19 for forced labour.

"We owe it to ourselves, our children and our grandchildren that this never again becomes reality," he said.

"That's the reason why we have to be severe with those who again make racism the defining characteristic of their convictions."

Around 60,000 prisoners from 40 countries were held in the camp and about one third died in the inhuman conditions.

"An excuse that one finds the same or similar elsewhere does not apply to us," Schroeder said.

His tour through the eastern states coincides with a recent upsurge in neo-Nazi violence directed against foreigners, the homeless and other minorities in the region.

East Germany is also suffering from the economic and social repercussions of unification 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, Germany's Postbank announced on Wednesday that it planned to close all accounts used by far-right groups.

"We are closing all the accounts of extreme right-wing organisations," Postbank chairman Wulf von Schimmelmann was quoted as telling the Bild daily in a statement to be published in Thursday's edition.

"We see our decision to close the accounts as a contribution to political hygiene and cementing of democracy in Germany and thereby fulfilling our social responsibility," he said.

Bild said two of the country's main far-right parties -- the German People's Union (DVU) and the National Democratic Party (NPD) -- had their main accounts for donations with the Postbank as did DVU's millionaire leader Gerhard Frey.

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