Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

German Locals Buy Town’s Entire Beer Supply To Dry Out Neo-Nazi Festival

Neo-Nazis visiting a small town in Germany for a far-right festival were forced to go without beer after police confiscated more than a thousand gallons and locals worked together to buy the rest of the town’s supply from supermarkets ahead of time, the BBC reported Monday.

Police seized 4,200 liters of beer on Friday after a local court ruled that the Shield and Sword far-right festival in Ostritz was likely to lead to violence if alcohol was served. Townspeople worked together to buy more than 200 crates of beer to ensure visitors couldn’t buy their own supply and smuggle it in.

“The plan was devised a week in advance,” local activist Georg Salditt told the newspaper Bild. “We wanted to dry the Nazis out. We thought, if an alcohol ban is coming, we’ll empty the shelves at the Penny [supermarket].”

“For us it’s important to send the message from Ostritz that there are people here who won’t tolerate this, who say ‘we have different values here, we’re setting an example, which is not the image of a far-right concert, which dominates the media coverage,’” a local woman explained to the TV station ZDF.

Around 500-600 people attended the festival, down from 1,200 the year before, local reports said. Police stated that there were only a few minor incidents.

Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.