Golden Dawn supporters march through Athens
Golden Dawn supporters march through AthensReuters

The Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party is forging close contacts with Bavarian neo-Nazis, the German Spiegel Online newspaper reported.

According to the report, the party, which received a surge in popularity in the country’s June general election, reportedly began setting up a cell in Nuremberg last year and recently held a conference in the southern German city.

An umbrella organization of Greek communities in Germany has called on all Greeks in Germany to reject attempts by neo-Nazis to promote "violence, intolerance and social cannibalism," Spiegel Online reported.

"Golden Dawn has an international network of contacts and also has contacts with Bavarian neo-Nazis. These contacts are nurtured through mutual visits and at meetings at right-wing extremist events in Europe," a spokesman for the Bavarian arm of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution told the German newspaper.

Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos has claimed that Nazi concentration camps did not use ovens and gas chambers to exterminate Jews during the Holocaust.

"There were no ovens — it's a lie. I believe it's a lie. There were no gas chambers either," Michaloliakos said last year.

The blatantly anti-Semitic and xenophobic party campaigned under the slogan “So we can rid the land of filth” and holds frequent rallies, chanting “Foreigners out of Greece!”

Yesterday a chilling video emerged showing tens of thousands of Golden Dawn supporters—dressed in military uniforms, holding torches, donning swastikas-- marching through Athens, in the movement’s largest demonstration of support since its rise to power last June.