Several German antifascist organisations have had their bank accounts closed by financial institutions in recent months, with campaigners and legal observers linking the closures to the Trump administration's designation of 'antifa' as a domestic terrorist organisation. Among those affected is the VVN-BdA (the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime – Federation of Antifascists), whose local branches in Berlin and Leipzig have lost accounts with Postbank and Skatbank respectively, while Berlin's Sparkasse has refused to open a new account for the Treptow district branch — a group that lays Stolpersteine (memorial cobblestones for Holocaust victims) and conducts school education programmes. In one court case involving the left-wing legal aid group Rote Hilfe, the Sparkasse Göttingen cited the US sanctions list as a reason for closure, raising suspicions that banks are acting pre-emptively to avoid being cut off from the Swift international payments system — a concern that campaigners say is now sweeping up organisations whose only connection to 'antifa' is the word itself.