A German far-right leader’s clothes were stolen by a thief yelling ‘no swimming for Nazis!’ as he went for an evening dip, he has revealed.
Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party co-leader Alexander Gauland emerged from the small lake near his home outside Berlin to find the items gone and had to walk to a police station in his swimming trunks.
Potsdam police have launched a probe after the incident last week and say that ‘political motivation’ cannot be ruled out.
Witnesses told Gauland, 77, that the thief had yelled out ‘this is no swimming area for Nazis.’
Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party co-leader Alexander Gauland (pictured) emerged from the small lake near his home outside Berlin to find the items gone
Gauland spoke after a photo started circulating on social media Tuesday showing him in his bathing suit walking with a police officer.
AfD entered the national parliament in last year’s election on anti-migrant and anti-establishment sentiment and is now the biggest opposition party.
Gauland told Maerkische Allgemeine: ‘My belongings were stolen by someone as I was in the water and other swimmers called the police without asking me.’
The newspaper reported that the incident in Heiliger See southwest of Berlin happened last Tuesday.
Gauland drew rebuke from German politicians over the weekend for saying that Hitler and the Nazis were nothing more than ‘bird poop,’ remarks interpreted as an attempt to downplay the significance of Nazi crimes.
‘Other swimmers told me that the robbers shouted, ‘This is no swimming place for Nazis’,’ Gauland, a lawmaker in the Bundestag lower house, told the newspaper. ‘My keys were in the trousers so the whole locking system of the house had to be changed,’ he said.
Gauland told an AfD gathering in the eastern state of Thuringia that ‘Hitler and the National Socialists are just bird poop in 1,000 years of successful German history.’
Politicians from of many parties condemned his remarks, saying they amounted to belittling the Holocaust and other crimes committed by the Nazis.
The Nazi dictatorship is a highly sensitive issue in Germany, more than seven decades after its defeat.
Germany has built its post-World War Two identity on the principle of keeping alive the memory of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis and a commitment to Israelâs right to exist. (Reporting by Joseph Nasr; editing by Toni Reinhold)