Berlin - Germany's largest Jewish umbrella organization Tuesday criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel for failing to condemn right-wing extremism in her home town of Templin.

"Your silence is equivalent to tacit toleration. We can no longer keep silent," Stephan Kramer, the general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the Passauer Neue Presse daily.

The newspaper noted a series of violent attacks with an extremist background in Templin, a town of some 17,000 to the north of Berlin, where Merkel grew up.

Two youths, aged 18 and 21 and linked to right-wing extremism, have been accused of beating a 55-year-old unemployed man to death in the town on July 22. (dpa)