THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 28, 1996 TAG: 9602290534
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY ANN EGERTON
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
IT IS SAID that confession is good for the soul. But the confession of the perpetrator may be so repelling that it's hard going for the audience, and that is certainly true in ``Fuhrer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Nazi,'' the relentlessly vicious account of a young man's participation in neo-Nazism in Germany in the late 1980s and early '90s.
Ingo Hasselbach is now out of the party that he helped to found. He says that he wrote ``Fuhrer-Ex'' ``to provide the first expose of the neo-Nazis' international network of paramilitary camps, indoctrination and friends in high places.''
This tepidly high-minded statement at the book's end is hard to reconcile with the pages and pages of descriptions of fights, fire-bombings, raids and hate-mongering that formed Hasselbach's life and gave him such satisfaction and pleasure for many years.
Here is a man 6-feet-6-inches tall who guiltlessly writes paragraphs about his feelings of ``joy'' as he kicked a man's guts in: ``(I)dealogy had `improved' my fighting. . . . It justified my every move. It allowed me to fight without scruples, to truly let go and feel everything I did was right - that every blow . . . was holy.''
This bloody type of narrative is repeated many, many times. Hasselbach insists that he never killed anyone.
Hasselbach's early years were harsh. He was the illegitimate son of an East German radio personality, who already had a wife and five children, and an East German journalist. His mother married a member of the East German elite who routinely beat young Ingo. From about his 11th year Ingo ran with a rough bunch of punks or skin-heads, and spent much of his time drunk, high on drugs, fighting or in jail, always nursing the deep well of anger within him.
He says that ``while I was becoming one of Berlin's toughest street fighters, I was in this sense a pure coward: I only began fights I knew I could win.''
He observes that his youth was perfect preparation for his brutal career as a neo-Nazi. Other early founders included more bullies, young men (one had 200 swastika tattoos on his body) who were entranced by earlier Nazi history and propaganda - including denial of the existence of concentration camps - and such misfits as Bendix, who liked to sleep in a World War II battlefield as well as dig up dead German soldiers.
Surprisingly, one leader was Michael Kuhnen, a homosexual who died of AIDS in 1991. Hasselbach succeeded him, at least in part.
The group named itself National Alternative and gained members, ``Kamerads,'' with the help of violent anti-Semitism and anti-foreign activism, just like the old days. Most had never met a Jew or foreigner. Their motto was ``we're back.'' Ironically, attention from the press dignified their cause.
Hasselbach was popular as a leader for his blond Aryan looks, his fighting skills and, for a while, his fanaticism. A strong out-of-town leader was German-born Gary Lauck, who lived in Nebraska and sent party members manuals on terrorism and weapons as well as typical Nazi propaganda, some on the Internet.
Reaction to Hasselbach's leaving the party included shock, anger, damage to his property, attempts on his mother's life and threats on his own, all exacerbated by his televised interviews about the neo-Nazis and his first book, ``The Reckoning: A Neo-Nazi Gets Out.'' Herr Hasselbach loves attention. He and American writer Tom Reiss wrote ``Fuhrer-Ex'' in Sweden.
The neo-Nazi movement in Germay[sic] has diminished in recent years. For readers with strong stomachs, ``Fuhrer-Ex'' is an interesting albeit frightening side dish of history. MEMO: Ann Egerton is a free-lance writer who lives in Baltimore. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
BOOK REVIEW
``Fuhrer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Nazi''
Author: Ingo Hasselbach with Tom Reiss
Publisher: Random House. 384 pp
Price: $24
by CNB