'Infiltrator' talks on neo-Nazis

Gruesome films of people being raped and killed. A "game" involving stabbing others in the foot. Jars filled with noses and penises. They are all part of the modern German neo-Nazi movement, Yaron Svoray told a rapt audience of more than 125 in Meyerson Hall Sunday night, as he related the tale of his 9 1/2-month attempt to infiltrate the movement. Svoray -- a former agent for Israel's equivalent of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation -- told the story of how he initially went to France in 1993 to pursue $200 million worth of diamonds rumored to be buried there, and instead stumbled upon a neo-Nazi group. Under the pretense of a journalist doing World War II research -- he did not want anyone to know he was after the jewels -- Svoray met the president of the "movie-of-the-month club" in Frankfurt. Svoray recalled how he was invited to a screening that the president thought would be of interest to the researcher. "As we walked into this big, huge room of high ceilings and overstuffed chairs, there were 32 men sitting there wearing Nazi uniforms," he said. Svoray had accidentally stumbled upon a meeting of the neo-Nazi movement, and the "president" of the movie club was actually the group's leader. The film depicted five men raping and beating an eight-year-old girl. As the Nazis watched, masturbating, the girl's throat was cut, Svoray explained, prompting the men to shout "Sieg heil! Sieg heil!," or "Hail victory!" "I was more disturbed as a human being than as a Jew," said Svoray of the gruesome experience, which led him to the decision to fight the modern Nazi movement. Svoray then came to the United States, where he went to the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization that fights hate crimes, and offered to expose the neo-Nazi groups' horrific practices. That first 10-day expedition to Germany had become a nine-month, $300,000, perilous undertaking in which Svoray's life would be put in danger more than once. Svoray told the crowd the story of how he took the alias of Ron Furey, editor of a fictitious American hate publication The Right Way, and returned to Germany, offering to write neo-Nazis' stories from their perspective. Moving among various gangs, he realized that the movement itself was larger than the individual neo-Nazi groups with which he interacted. Svoray related the tale of how he almost blew his cover when he spoke Hebrew at a Nazi training facility. He also described Nazi "games" that he witnessed which involved one man trying to throw a knife into a friend's foot to test his loyalty to the movement. A Nazi mercenary group nicknamed the "Pickle Jar Brigade," Svoray explained, proudly displayed jars filled with their victims' noses and penises. While Svoray chronicled these and other events meticulously in his 1994 book, In Hitler's Shadow, and testified before both the U.S. and German congresses, no action has been taken against the neo-Nazi groups. Svoray's story impressed many in the audience. "He was very brave," College freshman Holly Zanville said. "I could never imagine doing that. Never." "I can't get images of [concentration] camps out of my mind," College sophomore Aurit Lazerus said. "There's something very frightening about knowing there are monsters in the world capable of doing this stuff." Svoray, who also spoke at Penn in 1995, tours the country and speaks at universities about six weeks a year. Co-sponsored by Hillel's Holocaust Education Committee and Connaissance, Svoray's visit was also in observance of Monday's 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht -- the night of broken glass, a Nazi-orchestrated night of property damage and assaults against Germany's Jewish community. The film rights to his book on films showing actual murders, Gods of Death, was purchased by Mel Gibson. Svoray's experiences were also made into a 1995 HBO movie, The Infiltrator, starring Oliver Platt. Svoray is currently working on another way to fight the Nazi organization and is planning a return trip to France to look for the still-missing diamonds.