The police chief of the popular Greek tourist island of Hydra was photographed giving the Nazi salute while on a trip to Germany.

The Ethnos Sunday newspaper published the picture of Lt. Yiorgos Kagkalos, which it reported was taken in 2011 during a visit to the Nuremberg Transport Museum.

The publication follows persistent reports suggesting widespread support among the Greek police for the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party. It also comes in a week when the Greek Parliament is working to pass a law that would outlaw Holocaust denial and hate speech.

In the photo, Kagkalos is standing in front of a red locomotive emblazoned with the Nazi eagle and swastika. His arm is raised in the Nazi salute.

The newspaper reported that the photo had been sent anonymously to the police who investigated the incident, but ultimately did not charge Kagkalos due to lack of evidence.

Kagkalos has appealed to the administrative courts an order by police headquarters to remove him from his position, which he has held since 2011, the newspaper reported.

The huge gains made by far-right nationalist parties in the European Union elections have a lot of people on the continent and elsewhere scared. The results threaten to undermine the hard-won European unity that has been achieved since the end of World War Two.

The gains made by such parties across the board are the result of a variety of different local dynamics, but the common theme is hostility to immigrants and other religious minorities. Though center-right parties will still predominate in the EU parliament, the election threatens to further exacerbate an atmosphere in Europe in which anger against perceived outsiders morphs from localized violence to a general spirit of isolationism.

The fact that many of these parties, such as France’s National Front, have flirted with anti-Semitism while others, such as Greece’s Golden Dawn, have openly embraced it seems to illustrate the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe.

But there are some who are looking for a silver lining amid this dismal news.

When some Jews look at Europe’s far right parties, they see a potential ally against Islamists since the nationalists there are often obsessed with what they see as a threat to their culture and national identity from the large populations of immigrants from Muslim countries.

This leads some Americans on the right to believe that even though the EU nationalists are clearly hostile to Jews and Israel, they may nevertheless help secure Europe against Islamist influence and thus help preserve the West against those who are trying to overthrow it.

While there is a superficial logic to this enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend sort of thinking, it is a grave mistake. European Jews wouldn’t be the only piece of collateral damage in the blowup of Western democracy. The far right’s victory would weaken American influence and create a far more dangerous world for all of us.

As much as the lurch right seems to represent a backlash among Europeans against outside influences, let’s put aside any illusion that these parties are really capable of routing Islamist influences. Nothing short of a turn to open fascism can evict Muslim immigrants from Europe.

The rising influence of these communities and the anti-Semitism they help fuel stems not only from their numbers but also from the way the Jew-hatred they brought with them dovetails with traditional European anti-Semitism. Hostility to Israel and Jewish interests unites academics and other elites with those on the far right and Muslims.

Euro-nationalists of various stripes are not likely to be able to achieve their objectives with respect to Muslim immigrants because of the huge numbers involved and the resistance to that project from the traditional parties of the left and the center. But their fomenting of hate against religious minorities is likely to be more successful when it is directed against the far less numerous Jews.

Though the far right and Muslims are locked in a never-ending fight, Jews are more vulnerable and easily caught in the crossfire of that conflict. Just as important is the potential that these parties will splinter Europe in ways that are profoundly damaging to the defense of Western democracy.

Small government conservatives in the United States may sympathize with those Europeans who bristle at being ruled by unaccountable EU bureaucrats in Brussels. But as much as the EU seems to be a perfect combination of the perils of big social democratic governments, a Europe that is worried about appeasing anger on the right is one that is likely to opt out of the collective security arrangements that have guaranteed the peace of the world since 1945.

The EU is already a weak partner of the United States. But the increasing influence of rightist parties is liable to have a far greater impact on the ability of the U.S. to count on being able to use NATO to resist threats to collective security around the globe and in Europe as the Russian assault on Ukraine has proved.

For the first time ever, neo-Nazi political parties have won seats in the Brussels-based European Parliament, according to the latest exit polls. The election took place yesterday (Sunday, May 25), just a day after three Jews were murdered and a fourth person seriously wounded in a terror attack at the city’s Jewish Museum.

Is it a surprise that one of the parties was located in Germany? But a second country also voted in neo-Nazis as well — and not so far from Israel, either.

The neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NDP) won one MEP (Member of the European Parliament) seat in yesterday’s European Union (EU) elections, coming in fourth with one percent of the vote in German polls. In the 1930s, Germany’s Nazi party was officially named the ‘National Socialists.’

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s pro-EU Christian Democratic Union party won 36 percent of Germany’s vote, followed by the Social Democrats, a center-left coalition partner with 27.5 percent. But in third place was the new “Alternative for Germany” with 6.5 percent of the nation’s vote, according to The Daily Mail. And the anti-EU AfD party was reported to have won as many as six MEPs; the party has advocated for ending the country’s use of the euro as currency.

However, Germany was not the only country that flipped to the right, by a long shot.

In Greece, for the first time the extreme-right neo-Nazi ‘Golden Dawn’ party won three seats, coming in third with nine percent of the vote. The anti-EU Syriza party also took the lion’s share of the vote, with 27 percent, an ominous sign, analysts said.

“Euroscepticism,” – a relatively new term – is criticism of the European Union and opposition to the process of political European integration – belief that integration weakens the nation state – and this trend ruled the elections on Sunday, as The Daily Mail pointed out.

In Italy, the anti-EU “Five Star” (M5S) movement, headed by ex-comedian Beppe Grillo, appeared to be headed for a close second place with 25 to 28 percent of the vote. First place was just a shave ahead by Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi’s center left Democratic Party (PD) with 29.5 to 32.5 percent of the vote.

In France, Marine Le Pen made headline when her hardline French National Front party proved the most popular with a quarter of the vote, 11 percent ahead of the ruling Socialists. Le Pen called for new elections in France and labeled the EU Public Enemy Number One, saying it is “like the old Soviet Union – it can’t be improved.” In fact, President Francoise Hollande’s party came in third with 14.7 percent of the vote, following the center-right UMP, which garnered 20.3 percent.

In Sweden, the Feminist Initiative Party also won seats in the European Parliament for the first time, with around seven percent of the vote. However, so did far-right Sweden Democrats.

In Belgium, where election coverage competed with coverage of the terror attack at the Brussels Jewish Museum, Flemish separatists were the big winners in the parliamentary elections there. But it will be months before a new government is formed.

The center-right New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) has a third of the votes in Flanders, where 60 percent of Belgian residents live and where Dutch is spoken – this, after 80 percent of the votes are counted. N-VA leader Bart De Wever said he believes the king will grant him the right to attempt to form a coalition, but it will mean finding potential French-speaking allies. Due to the Belgian system, there are effectively two elections, each with at least parties in two languages – French and Dutch. At least two from each side will be needed to form a coalition.

The northern Greek city of Thessaloniki will build a Holocaust research center at the site where some 50,000 of the city’s Jews were deported to Nazi death camps. “This is the fulfilment of a historic responsibility for Thessaloniki,” city Mayor Yiannis Boutaris told reporters.

The agreement to establish the Memorial Center on Holocaust Education Remembrance and Research at the city’s old railway station was signed among the Thessaloniki Jewish community, the city and the Greek transport ministry.

The Jewish community of Thessaloniki was one of the most important centers of Sephardic Jewry for 450 years following the expulsion from Spain. Known as the Flower of the Balkans, it was the center of Ladino culture in the region. In March 1943 the Nazis began sending Jews in railway convoys to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. By August, 49,000 out of the city’s pre-war population of 55,000 Jews had been deported. Fewer than 2,000 survived.

Boutaris has been instrumental in acknowledging the city’s rich Jewish history and the extent of its devastation. Earlier this year he organized a public march to commemorate 70 years since the first deportations, the first such display by the Jewish community since the end of the war.

The Thessaloniki Jewish community said the project was a long-held dream and particularly important at a time when Greece is struggling to deal with the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party which has 18 seats in parliament.

A Greek court has ordered the head of the ultranationalist Golden Dawn party held in jail until his trial following six hours of testimony that ran through the night.

Nikolaos Michaloliakos was arrested last week with several other lawmakers and senior Golden Dawn members on charges of forming a criminal organization, part of an unprecedented crackdown on the neo-Nazi party. Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou hailed the decision on Michaloliakos an important victory for the Greek legal system, calling it “the most dynamic confrontation of a neo-Nazi criminal gang in European, and possibly world, history.”

Golden Dawn has 18 seats in the 300-member parliament and is known for its Nazi swastika-like flag and Holocaust-denying leadership. Its leaders have denied the charges against them, saying the arrests were part of a political witch hunt against the party.

The crackdown on Golden Dawn, which included the arrest of more than 10 other party leaders, follows widespread outrage and protests in Greece in the wake of the Sept. 18 killing of anti-fascist rapper Killah P by a suspected Golden Dawn member.

Soccer team AEK Athens player Giorgos Katidis has been under intense attacks by politicians, fellow soccer players, and—most important—the fans, after giving the Nazi salute after scoring a goal in a league game.

From the video of the game, it is clear that the midfielder Katidis raised his right arm in the “Heil Hitler” salute we all know from countless WW2 movies, after scoring the go-ahead goal in the 84th minute of a game against the Veria team on Saturday.

In the screen shot above, Katidis’ Brazilian-born teammate Roger Guerreiro is looking at him with a mix of astonishment and repulsion.

And the video below shows that while his ecstatic teammates were rushing to hug him in admiration, Katidis tried hard to keep up his saluting arm, meaning this was not just an unintentional gesture. This was a Nazi salute par excellence.

Nevertheless, the 20-year-old Katidis is pleading ignorance, insisting—including, of course, on his Twitter account—that he is, actually, anti-fascist.

And Ewald Lienen, AEK’s German coach, told the press his lad is innocent, and doesn’t have an “idea about politics” in his goal scoring head.

Since its foundation 1980, The People’s Association – Golden Dawn, or, simply Golden Dawn, has been a right-wing extremist political organization, led by Nikolaos Michaloliakos. Scholars and the media describe it as neo-Nazi and fascist, although the group rejects these labels, saying it follows the political ideology of Ioannis Metaxas, Greece’s prime minister in the 1930s, who preached national unity through the abolition of all political parties. But the Golden Dawn party uses of Nazi-looking symbols, and praises German Nazism.

Greece’s Jewish community has complained to authorities in Athens after a controversial entertainer used a symbol of an intertwined swastika and a Star of David to promote his night club shows.

“The design depicted on the poster fiercely insults our very religion as well as the memory of the six million Jews, victims of the Holocaust,” said a statement from the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, addressed to the country’s Minister of Justice and officials in the education ministry.

The poster advertising the show by singer and comedian Tsimis Panousis, for a series of shows at a club in the port city of Piraeus near Athens, shows a Magen David intertwined with a swastika.

The poster has been plastered widely across Athens and on major boulevards in the city. Panousis, who has a reputation for being provocative, was apparently trying to imply that Greece’s financial crisis was a result of the combined efforts of a German-led austerity plan and Jewish-controlled financial interests.

The Jewish central board’s statement said the board had appealed to various municipalities to remove the offending posters and that they had received positive responses. However, the posters remained up in many places in the city.

There has been an upsurge in anti-Semitic incidents in Greece recently, but most have been tied to the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party.