German Jewish leaders and politicians accused the far-right AfD on Friday of whipping up the kind of hatred that made the deadly anti-Semitic attack in Halle possible, a charge angrily rejected by the party.
As the country searched for answers after the rampage by a suspected neo-Nazi who had tried to storm a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle, several critics accused the Alternative for Germany party of making aggressive bigotry mainstream.
Felix Klein, the government's pointman for fighting anti-Semitism, said the AfD, the biggest opposition party in parliament, trafficked in incendiary anti-Jewish sentiment.
He noted that leading figures in the party had called Germany's cherished culture of Holocaust remembrance and atonement for Nazi crimes into question, just as they criticized Jewish religious rites.
"The AfD has a great number of views that are hostile to Jews," Klein told public broadcaster ZDF.
"For instance their position that ritual slaughter of animals [for kosher food preparation] should be banned."
He pointed to AfD chief Alexander Gauland, who has expressed "pride" for the actions of German soldiers during World War II, and dismissed the Nazi period as a mere "speck of bird poop" in Germany's history.
Klein's post was created last year in response to a sharp rise in hate crimes against Jews in Germany seven decades after the Holocaust.
'Paving the way'
Suspect Stephan Balliet, 27, is accused of shooting two people dead on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, after he tried and failed to storm a synagogue filled with at least 50 worshippers.
He admitted to the crime and confessed that it was motivated by anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism, federal prosecutors said yesterday.
The gunman made a 35-minute video, obtained by AFP, in which he filmed himself launching into a diatribe against women and Jews and denying the Holocaust before carrying out the attack.
Although Balliet is believed to have committed the assault alone, commentators noted he had tapped into a murky pool of extremist ideology readily found online.