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GREENSBORO — The white-supremacist National Socialist Movement held a daylong business meeting Saturday in a location kept secret from counter-demonstrators who decried the movement’s racist ideology in a largely peaceful gathering downtown.

The movement’s “regional conference” occurred at a hotel in western Greensboro. The News & Record is not identifying the location at the request of city police, who fear violence if the group’s more aggressive foes learn where its members are staying through this morning.

“It went as well as could be expected,” said Capt. Janice Rogers,  noting that police successfully kept the two sides apart while closely shadowing both events.

By mid-afternoon, about 200 anti-NSM demonstrators crowded onto the corner of McGee and South Elm streets.  The college students, senior citizens and families with small children said they wanted to show the neo-Nazi group that they are not welcome in Greensboro.

“My mother is a Holocaust survivor,” said Arieh Salzman, 60.  “Because of what these neo-Nazis believe, because of that hatred, I never had grandparents and my mother, who was in a concentration camp for four years, did not have a childhood.”

Salzman and a small group of friends wore homemade T-shirts with slogans like “Remember Nuremberg” and small rainbow ribbons provided by Temple Emanuel.  Salzman said he knew some people who opposed Saturday’s neo-Nazi gathering but didn’t want to come out to a protest, didn’t want to make a fuss.

“We don’t believe in staying home,” Salzman said. “The reason the Nazis rose to power in 1939 is because people stayed home.”

The National Socialist Movement drew 50 to 70  people for a meeting ostensibly to train members from Pennsylvania to Florida  in recruiting and other growth tactics.

“It’s just going to be a closed-door meeting, members only, just kind of going over tactics and what we want to accomplish on the East Coast,” said Steven Boswell,  a Missouri  resident who described himself as the leader of the group’s “SS, that’s for security services.”

The Detroit-based  group is estimated to have only a few hundred members but still qualifies as the nation’s largest neo-Nazi organization, said Marilyn Mayo, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s center on extremism.

NSM is one of the more flamboyant of such groups and has its highest membership in the Midwest, Mayo said. The Southeast is its second-strongest bastion, but a recent Anti-Defamation report counted only 58  known members across the region.

“These guys are really out there,” said Mayo, whose group fights anti-Semitism and other bigotry. “When you see them at a rally, you’re going to see people who proudly display the Nazi swastika.”

Though small, the National Socialist Movement is like a number of other white-supremacy or white-separatist groups that are trying to attract new members from people who avoided extremist groups in the past but now are perturbed by the election of the nation’s first African American president, the economic downturn and such issues as illegal immigration, Mayo said.

The hallways of the Greensboro hotel presented a strange scene Saturday as NSM members milled about, some clad all in black, some with shaved heads, many wearing T-shirts, jewelry or tattoos displaying Nazi symbols.

One man had a swastika tattooed into the back of his shaven head. T-shirts bore such messages as “White Pride World Wide.”

Meanwhile, the hotel staff served its more usual multiracial clientele of airline crews, end-of-summer vacationers and other travelers, some of whom looked  askance at the NSM members before continuing about their business without comment.

A strong police presence was evident, with plain-clothes officers deployed inside the hotel and patrolling outside.

Downtown later in the day, the mostly white crowd was made up of college students and older Greensboro residents who said they simply wanted to make sure the group knew just how strong an opposition they face in the Gate City.

Some of the protesters were from organized groups like the Revolutionary Communist Party  and the Equality Coalition of North Carolina.  Local City Council candidate Jorge Cornell  was on hand flanked by members of his Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation group.

Political literature was handed out as speakers on a megaphone talked about racism, the health care debate and police brutality.

“In Greensboro We Sit-In, Stand-Up and Speak Out Against Hate,” read one of the protest signs, referencing the Civil Rights-era sit-ins at a whites-only lunch counter just blocks from the protest.

But with some signs like “I Love Dead Nazis” and “Die Racist Scum,” some in the crowd predicted a confrontation should any neo-Nazis show up. They were proven right when two men wearing Nazi garb rolled past the protest in their car.

Police said the men got into a heated back-and-forth with protesters that led to one of the protesters denting their car door. Dozens of protesters chased after the car as it sped away. The two men called the police after leaving the scene to file a complaint, but no arrests were made.

Rogers said the two may have been Nazi sympathizers, but they were not National Socialist Movement members.

The manager of the hotel where the group met Saturday said the group had not fully disclosed its political focus or plans when it booked rooms and meeting space with the hotel chain’s groups and tours division.

He learned that on his own “by researching the name,” he said.

But the hotel could not refuse to accommodate the group simply because of its extreme political views, he said.

The hotel has a racially diverse staff including African Americans and Hispanics. Management spoke to them about the National Socialist Movement to “educate them about the group,” he said.

The business meeting lasted from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the hotel’s meeting room with several breaks. A two-hour “meet and greet,” including a speech by the group’s leader, Jeff Schoep , followed.

Staff photographer Nelson Kepley contributed to this report.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com