Germany’s main Jewish representative body said last Tuesday said it was shocked by a standing ovation that a Catholic group gave to a television presenter who was sacked for praising the Nazis’ approach to families.

Eva Herman was greeted with strong applause when she gave a speech to present her new book about family values to a crowd of about 700 Catholics in Fulda in central Germany at the weekend, just a month after she was sacked by the state-run NDR television channel.

The vice-president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann, said the applause for Herman was "proof of the moral poverty of the participants and a slap in the face for all those who have worked for the past 60 years to re-appraise the Nazi dictatorship."

Herman, 48, was sacked after a book launch at which she had described Germany’s Nazi past as "a gruesome time ... but even then there were good things and these were the values of children, mothers, families, togetherness."

She did not repeat those words in her speech in Fulda, but insisted that what she had said on that occasion had been taken out of context.

"Anything in this country about family, happiness with married partners and with children and anything that sounds feminine, masculine and motherly will remarkably quickly be linked to the slogans of the Nazis," Herman told the Forum of German Catholics.

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