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

Participants arrive for a neo-Nazi music festival on April 21, 2018 in Ostritz, Germany. Image by Sean Gallup/Getty Images

By Aiden Pink June 26, 2019

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

Aiden Pink is the Deputy News Editor for the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO