W

hen Sven Krueger strode toward me swiftly and threateningly, I recognized him immediately. It was the face I’d seen — shaven head, flashing eyes, trademark rolled-up beard — in the many photos I had studied in preparation for our visit to this German village.

“Raus! Raus!” he shouted without preamble.

“Warum?” I asked, mustering up my best German. “Why do we have to leave?”

“Because you’re a Jew,” he said. He advanced toward us, waving his hands menacingly. “And this is our town.”

That was our welcome to Jamel, a remote hamlet in northern Germany, a short drive away from the Baltic Sea. The village is in the Nordwestmecklenburg district, an area that identifies deeply with the National Democratic Party (NPD), Germany’s far right-wing faction, and has put several neo-Nazis into the parliament. (The extreme right is thought to be behind dozens of violent attacks and instances of vandalism over the past decade.) And Jamel, with its few dozen residents, is perhaps the most extreme manifestation of a chilling phenomenon in the former Communist East Germany: encroaching neo-Nazism.

This tiny town has a distinct neo-Nazi feel. An illuminated mural depicting a blond man with his wife and children, bearing the neo-Nazi slogan “frei-sozial-national,” dominates the middle of the village. A few meters away stands a multidirectional signpost: One sign points toward “Wien, Ostmark” — Vienna, Austria, as it was termed under Nazi rule. Another sign points to Braunau am Inn, the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, some 855 kilometers away, which has become a pilgrimage venue for neo-Nazis. And townsfolk regularly host outdoor parties where guests sing “Hitler Is My Fuehrer” and chant “Heil” around a massive bonfire.

Sven Krueger, who fittingly owns a demolition company, is the undisputed boss of this little enclave. He was born in Jamel, and was known for years to authorities for small-time criminal activity, but he’d stayed off the radar after turning to extreme right-wing politics — until he was arrested in 2011 on charges of harboring stolen property and illegally possessing a submachine gun with 200 rounds of ammunition.

After Krueger’s release from prison in 2016, the NPD distanced itself from him (even though their regional headquarters were housed in the building of his company). Unperturbed, Krueger set up his own party and is now running in the upcoming local German elections.

A decade ago, Krueger was the only neo-Nazi in the village, but with calculated determination, he encouraged some likeminded friends to move in as well. They purchased and rented homes in quick succession, so that one fine day the authorities, and subsequently the media, discovered that Jamel was essentially occupied territory. Or a “nationally liberated zone,” as Mr. Krueger likes to call it.

And the logo on his demolition company? A man smashing a Star of David with a sledgehammer.

Little can be done legally to expel the neo-Nazis. They carefully skirt German laws against displaying Nazi symbols, such as the swastika or the SS runes, and the banned songs people hear in the night cannot be pinned on any individual.

Still, provocations toeing the fine line between legal and illegal haven’t gone unnoticed. Once it was a barbecue grill with the words “Happy Holocaust” emblazoned across it. Then there’s the Aryan family mural, and of course the signpost directing visitors to the mysterious Northwestern Austrian town of Braunau am Inn. Putting up such a signpost in public is illegal, but the neo-Nazis of Jamel found a way around that, by installing the sign on private property.

No Fear

Many journalists have visited Jamel over the last few years — hundreds of reporters travel to Jamel every year in order to cover a neo-Nazi festival that Sven Krueger runs in his yard, but most are not allowed in, and residents rarely speak to them. The police don’t appreciate the influx of reporters either —between patrolling the house, guarding the visitors, and manning the small booths selling Nazi symbols and propaganda, the police have their hands full trying to enforce the law within a hotbed of hatred.

One reporter who remained in Jamel for an entire month is Tehran-born Michel Abdollahi. Abdollahi is a German-Muslim journalist, writer, and cultural hero who received a municipal permit allowing him to set up a temporary structure for a month while putting together a documentary for “Panorama,” a German television show.

During his stay in Jamel, Abdollahi managed to speak to some of the usually reticent locals, and even Sven Krueger treated him to a measure of levelheadedness. The documentary Abdollahi put together is testimony to the dark ideologies that lie behind Jamel’s façade of neutrality.