Pope Francis paid a surprise visit on Saturday to the home of Edith Bruck, a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor and author, and paid homage to all those killed by Nazi "insanity."

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Bruck, 89, who lives in Rome, was born into a poor Jewish family and spent time in a series of concentration camps, losing her father, mother and brother in them.

A Vatican spokesman, who announced the visit after it ended, said the two spoke of her time in the camps and the importance that future generations be made aware of what happened.

"I came here to thank you for your witness and to pay homage to the people martyred by the insanity of Nazi populism," the Vatican quoted the pope as telling Bruck.

Bruck, who has lived in Italy for decades and writes in Italian, was about 13 when she was taken to Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland with her family.

Video: Reuters

Her mother died there and her father died in Dachau, in Germany, where they were taken after that. While in Dachau, she dug trenches and laid railway sleepers (ties), she recently told the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano.

She later spent time in Christianstadt, a sub-camp of the larger Gross-Rosen camp. She finally wound up in Bergen-Belsen, where she was liberated by the Allies in 1945.

The Nazis and their allies murdered around 6 million Jews, as well as others, in German-occupied Europe.

More than a million people, most of them Jews, were killed at Auschwitz in southern Poland, which was liberated by Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 1945. The vast majority were gassed to death.

The pope, who rarely leaves the Vatican for private visits, spent about an hour with Bruck, who has written novels and plays and directed films.

Last month on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the pope, who visited Auschwitz in 2016, urged people to keep a close watch on ideological extremism, because "these things can happen again."

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Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the head of the Brussels-based European Jewish Association, said the upcoming sale of the manuscripts is particularly worrisome amid recent surveys showing rising anti-Semitism in Germany, and could encourage neo-Nazis.

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"I cannot get my head around the sheer irresponsibility and insensitivity, in such a febrile climate, of selling items such as the ramblings of the world's biggest killer of Jews to the highest bidder," he said in a statement. "What auctions like this do is help legitimize Hitler enthusiasts who thrive on this sort of stuff."

The speech notes being offered, all dated before World War II, are directed to Nazi-party organizations and contributors at various functions, and make reference to preparing Germany for war and the "Jewish problem," said Bernhard Pacher, the managing director of the Hermann Historica auction house where they go on sale Friday.

He defended the sale, saying the papers belong in a museum or in the hands of researchers as historical documents.

"These are handwritten notes from Adolf Hitler, where if you analyze what he wrote ... you can prove he was publicly speaking about going to war, about 'resolving the Jewish problem,'" Pacher told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

"If we destroy these things and they do not go into a museum for experts to work on them, you will leave the interpretation of what was happening to the right-wing Nazi apologists, who will say Hitler never said that. The man was preparing the Germans that there would be a war and those who didn't want to see that must have been totally blind – it's in there."

The auction house has come under fire in the past for its sale of Nazi-era items, and maintains it goes to great lengths to ensure that they are not being sold to neo-Nazis, and are usually bought by museums and research facilities.

In 2016, it auctioned off one of Hitler's uniforms for 275,000 euros ($325,000) and previously sold a typewriter and dozens of other items owned by the Nazi leader, among other things.

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Perhaps most famously, last year Abdallah Chatila, a Lebanese-born Swiss real estate mogul purchased Hitler's top hat, a silver-plated edition of Mein Kampf and other items the auction house offered in order to keep them out of the hands of neo-Nazis, and donated them to a Jewish group.

The auction house has also dealt in many other items owned by famous historical figures, including Napoleon Bonaparte's silver and gold-plated toothbrush, a saber that belonged to British naval hero Adm. Horatio Nelson, and a sword that once belonged to famed Italian seducer Giacomo Casanova.

Margolin called the businessman's intervention to purchase the items last year "a miracle," but said "we cannot rely on miracles going forward" and urged the auction house to pull the speeches from the upcoming sale.

"It defies logic, decency and humanity for the very same auction house that came under fire less than a year ago for selling disgusting lots of Nazi memorabilia that they should do so again," he said.

Starting prices for the speech notes range between 2,500 euros and 7,500 euros ($3,000-8,800), which Pacher said is a deterrent in and of itself to them being purchased by right-wing extremists.

"For neo-Nazi purposes, you don't spend 10,000 on these things, you get yourself a copy," he said.

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The Jewish owner of the Morgen Wird Besser pub in Berlin's Lichtenberg neighborhood said that for some years, he has been the target of harassment and threats by anti-Semitic neighbors and neo-Nazis. German media reported that local police had confirmed that they were investigating the arson as a possible anti-Semitic hate crime.

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On Wednesday, Jews and Israelis in Berlin visited the pub in a show of support for the owner and as a protest against growing anti-Semitism in the country.

Rabbi of Dresden Akiva Weingarten discussed the incident, saying, "When the news arrived about a fire in a Berlin bar that was owned by Jews – what appears to be a hate crime and an act by members of the far Right – I couldn't not connect it to our blood-soaked history here.

"Jewish shops in Germany being burned awakens horrible memories of our past here in the heart of every Jew," Weingarten said, adding that he believed that the German authorities would find the perpetrators and try them in court.

"Especially now, when the trial of the killer from Halle is under way, we expect the words 'Never Again' to not remain hollow," Weingarten said.

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Police in 16 towns and cities from the Mediterranean island of Sicily to the Alps in northern Italy took part in the investigation, which was launched two years ago.

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The probe revealed a "huge and varied array of subjects, residents in different places, united by the same ideological fanaticism and willing to create an openly pro-Nazi, xenophobic and anti-Semitic movement", a police statement said.

Police did not say how many people joined the group or how many arrests were made. In Italy "defense of fascism" and efforts to revive fascist parties are considered crimes.

The new party was called the Italian National Socialist Party of Workers and police showed off a range of Nazi paraphernalia, including swastikas and pictures of Adolf Hitler seized during searches of 19 properties.

They also found a large number of weapons, including pistols, hunting rifles, and crossbows.

The group had forged links with extremist groups abroad, including in Portugal, Britain, and France, police said.

Police in July found a huge stash of weapons, including an air-to-air missile, linked to far-right extremists, while in November two men connected to another group of Nazi sympathizers were arrested on suspicion of planning to attack a mosque.

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No injuries were reported in the incident, as the building was empty at the time of the attack. The center did, however, sustain minor damage when the neo-Nazis attempted to set it ablaze.

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According to reports, local police were slow to intervene.

The neo-Nazis in question are believed to belong to the Sixty-Four Counties Youth Movement, the country's most prominent radical right-wing group.

This was not the first time the extremist group has targeted the Auróra center. Two years ago, seven black-clad members of the organization hung posters of Hungarian American billionaire George Soros with his face crossed out on the building's exterior and spray-painted anti-Soros graffiti on its walls.

Later, members of the Sixty-Four Counties group posted a video online in which they claimed that "the Jewish center promotes deviant circles and the gypsy community's media center. The groups that use Auróra, whether Jewish or not, are far from being invulnerable. We will come to 'say hello' once more."

According to Adam Schonberger, the director of the Conservative Marom Jewish association and the man who founded the 2014, these were isolated incidents. He said that relations with the local community were positive on the whole.

Marom owns and operates Auróra in conjunction with its outreach to young, unaffiliated Hungarian Jews and others.

The Auróra is also home to Roma, LGBTQ, and other activist groups critical of the Hungarian government.

The radical Right in Hungary has grown increasingly brazen following Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's rise to power and the legislation of anti-liberal laws in the Central European country. Much of its rage has been directed at migrants who enter Hungary in order to get into the European Union.

Parts of this article were reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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That was the refrain repeated by German broadcasters throughout Oct. 9 as news of the attempted Yom Kippur attack on a Halle synagogue that saw two bystanders killed came to light. The options were obvious: either extremist Muslims or extremist right-wingers were behind the shooting.

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German media treaded lightly until the perpetrator, a neo-Nazi, with suspect Stephan Balliet, 27, going so far as to brazenly document his attack and its planning, was confirmed. The style and rhetoric were similar to the shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and the Chabad of Poway, which raised the alarm to the growing prominence of right-wing hate groups in the United States.

Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democrats, who has lost political ground to the Right since her decision to welcome more than a million Muslim refugees and migrants since 2015, made a generic, televised statement in which she said: "We must use all the means of the rule of law to combat hatred, violence and enemies of mankind. There can be no tolerance whatsoever."

On Twitter, Foreign Affairs Minister Heiko Mass, a member of the Social Democrats and a proponent of the nuclear deal with Iran as well as Muslim migration, said: "Anti-Semitism and xenophobia must have no place in our society. It is shameful to have to say this sentence so often in Germany."

The rise of the violent Right

At a press conference the next day, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer remorsefully claimed that the "anti-Semitic threat from the extremist Right and right-wing terror is very high in Germany."

The German Jewish community criticized the country's negligent security and surveillance systems. The synagogue was not given police protection during the holiday; it was the heavy, bolted door that kept the gunman out and protected the 80 or so worshippers inside.

Erstes 1, Germany's largest public broadcaster, dedicated coverage to right-wing extremism, highlighting its social media hangouts and recent history of attacks against Jews and foreigners alike.

Some analysts and activists, however, question German political sincerity when reactions seem to differ depending on the anti-Semitic source.

"Obviously, the terrorist was a native German, and this made it very easy for politicians to condemn the attack as right-wing and anti-Semitic, and to make nice, moving comments about solidarity with the Jewish community," said Andreas Boldt, a German pro-Israel activist who founded the 38,000 member-strong "German-Israel Friendship" Facebook page, which saw a spike in likes since the attack. "However, for me, these are empty words – a lie, a bluff, very dishonest behavior. Why? Germany regularly condemns Israel along with Islamic dictatorships in the United Nations."

Germany came under fire from the Jewish community and Israeli politicians when it voted down a motion in the Bundestag to change anti-Israel voting patterns in the United Nations. It has also been widely criticized by Jewish leaders, as well as the Trump administration in Washington for refusing to outlaw the political arm of Hezbollah that claims more than 1,000 operatives in Germany.

"The alleged neo-Nazi suspect arrested on Tuesday shared a global anti-Semitic worldview of a 'Zionist-occupied government' theory," stated Benjamin Weinthal from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an analyst of German politics.

"The interconnections of modern anti-Semitism among Islamists, the far-Left and the far-Right are patently obvious, and Merkel offers no program of action to blunt the rise of this highly dangerous form of Jew-hatred."

"What can be done? Merkel can, with the swipe of a pen before next week, ban Hezbollah and the Palestinian terrorist entity Popular Front for the Liberation for Palestine in Germany."

Weinthal regularly highlights the German political disconnect between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, most recently illustrated with Merkel's downplaying of Iran's call to wipe Israel off the map as "anti-Israel" rhetoric as opposed to blatant anti-Semitism.

The Merkel government versus the AfD

Anti-Semitism is often utilized by German political groups to make jabs at each other, particularly between the governing coalition and its archenemy in the domestic political sphere: the right-wing Alternative for Germany, which made significant gains in regional elections in eastern Germany, where the Halle attack occurred, facilitating a connection between AfD and the attack.

SPD lawmaker Karl Lauterbach, for example, tweeted: "It's the hate spread by the AfD that gave the far-Right a voice. This hate speech legitimized individual perpetrators to commit such acts of cruelty. These criminals want to do the AfD's bidding. The AfD carries a large share of the blame for this attack."

The AfD quickly tried to deflect such accusations, with party leaders condemning the attack with its own political twist: "Jewish life belongs to Germany. We must defend it against the attacks of neo-Nazis, left-wing extremists, and Islamists!" declared party leader Beatrix von Storch in a statement.

Von Storch was a mastermind behind a motion in the Bundestag to ban Hezbollah that was rejected in large part due to the party of the messenger, which was accused of using Jews to bash Muslims.

Vice president of the Jews in the AfD faction, Artur Abramovych, conceded that had the attack been motivated by Islam, the AfD would have likewise used it to castigate Merkel's seeming Islamic appeasement. A popular AfD refrain is: "Islam does not belong to Germany."

"But at least the AfD isn't ignoring the far-right anti-Semitism," he said. "There were many statements today, and already yesterday, while the mainstream is trying to ignore the Islamist and leftist anti-Semitism."

One case in point: Merkel issued no statement after an attempted knife attack by a Syrian refugee at the central New Synagogue in Berlin days before Yom Kippur. The perpetrator was let go by authorities the next day, much to the anger of Boldt and other pro-Jewish activists.

"When a Muslim attacks a synagogue, they will release him a few days after as if nothing happened, and nobody comes out in solidarity. They even try to understand him and try to explain why he did it," said Boldt.

In another example, a German court ruled that a 2014 firebombing of a Wuppertal synagogue by Palestinians was not anti-Semitic, but a protest against Israeli policies.

"It is incomprehensible how someone who tries to infiltrate a synagogue with a knife can be free again after less than 24 hours, as was the case last weekend in Berlin," acting director of AJC Berlin, Dr. Remko Leemhuis, said in a press release on the Halle attack, concluding: "The time of abstract confessions against anti-Semitism is over. Anyone who wants to do something against Jew-hatred must above all begin by relentlessly naming it from every direction and in every shade, and not always picking out the group of perpetrators that fits into their own political agenda."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Five members of the group, who were "close in ideology to the neo-Nazi movement" were charged between September and May over the alleged plot, a source close to the investigation said.

"The investigation suggested they were developing an ill-defined plot to carry out an attack, likely to target a place of worship," a French judicial source said, giving no details on motives or specific targets.

Police in the southeastern city of Grenoble first arrested a man on weapons charges in September 2018. The investigation led them to the four other suspects, two of them minors.

Anti-terrorism officers continued the investigation in January, charging the suspects with terror-related offenses, including manufacturing and transporting explosive devices and participating in a terrorist conspiracy.

Since 2015, France has experienced a number of devastating attacks carried out by jihadists against its civilian population. In recent months, reports have highlighted attack plots originating from far-right extremist groups.

In November, French police arrested six people over an alleged plot to assassinate President Emmanuel Macron.

In June 2018, 13 people with links to the radical Action des Forces Opérationnelles (Operational Forces Action) group were arrested by anti-terrorist police over an alleged plot to attack Muslims.

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Tawil was attacked by three youths, who began by hurling verbal abuse at the rabbi and then proceeded to beat him, striking his head and abdomen. They then threw him to the floor, kicked him, and trampled his hat.

According to local reports, neighbors came to the rabbi's aid and put an end to the attack, which is believed to have been motivated by anti-Semitism.

Gabriel Dobkin, president of the DAIA Jewish umbrella organization in Argentina, reported that Tawil, who has operated the Chabad House for the past three decades, was recovering well from his injuries and was surrounded by family.

"We're very disturbed this attack," Dobkin said.

"For the most part, there are [only] isolated incidents of anti-Semitic insults toward members of the community, but there has never been violence like this," he explained.

The attack on Tawil is the latest anti-Semitic incident reported in Argentina. Ten days ago, a swastika was spray-painted on a Jewish-owned hair salon in Buenos Aires. Neo-Nazi pamphlets were also distributed in the area near the salon.

In another incident, a cantor was attacked while returning home from Shabbat services.

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The company said in a statement that it will block "videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion. It's our responsibility to protect that and prevent our platform from being used to incite hatred, harassment, discrimination and violence."

YouTube further stated, "Our systems are also getting smarter about what types of videos should get this treatment, and we'll be able to apply it to even more borderline videos moving forward."

This article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Footage of the march prompted widespread outrage in Germany and calls for authorities in the state of Saxony, where far-right sentiment is particularly strong, to step in.

"The images of the neo-Nazi march by The Third Way party in Plauen are disturbing and frightening," said Josef Schuster, the head of Germany's Central Council of Jews.

Noting that the rally took place on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Schuster said that "right-wing extremists are marching in Saxony in a way that brings back memories of the darkest chapter in German history."

German security agencies say The Third Way, a relatively small party, has close ties to far-right extremists. The march in Plauen took place to the beat of heavy drums made to look like those used by the Hitler Youth. Participants shouted slogans such as "Criminal foreigners out!" and "National Socialism now!"

Saxony police said several hundred people took part in the march. Counter-protesters were kept away.

Police said they are investigating nine people for illegally covering their faces during the event and another for insulting an officer, but described the day as a success from a policing perspective because there was no violence.

The Central Council of Jews said authorities should have prevented the march from taking place at all.

"If the Saxony state government is serious about combating right-wing extremism, it must not allow such demonstrations," Schuster said. "The Jewish community expects decisive action and visible consequences from the responsible authorities and the state government."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union is running neck-and-neck in recent opinion polls with the far-right Alternative for Germany party ahead of Sept. 1 state election in Saxony.

At a separate rally Wednesday, neo-Nazis marched through the western German city of Duisburg with signs calling for the destruction of Israel.

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