'We’ll keep going’, says PEGIDA’s 'Hitler' Lutz Bachmann at rally

Thousands turned out in the eastern German city of Dresden Monday for a rally by the Islamophobic PEGIDA group, indicating the organization still has drawing power even after a public split that saw many of its founders quit last week.

Authorities said turnout was significantly lower than two weeks ago, when the group drew 17,000 people onto the streets of Dresden. Police estimated Monday's attendance at 2,000 people, while organizers claimed 5,000 participants.

And one of the organization's participants was Lutz Bachmann -- the former leader of the group who gave up his leadership role after a photo of himself as Nazi leader Adolf Hitler surfaced.

Bachmann surfaced at Monday's PEGIDA rally - which was the first rally he participated at after his resignation - and spoke to the crowd: "We'll keep going. There is no other way."

He refuted reports, which surfaced at the same time as his selfie, that he had posted racist comments on Facebook. Bachmann said the wording was edited to make him look bad.

He said he was certain he had used wording "that everyone, really every one of us, has used at least once when out for drinks."

In the original posts, he had referred to asylum seekers as "trash" and "filth."

The group, whose name is the German acronym for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, started its rallies in October and grew in strength as supporters coalesced around its anti-immigrant, pro-German culture message.

The group started attracting growing counter demonstrations in late 2014, but ran into rougher waters three weeks ago when its key leaders split from the group amid worries about the racist overtones expressed by some march participants, as well as about the damage membership was causing their own reputations.

As PEGIDA's rally was going on, members of an anti-PEGIDA group were holding another demonstration in Dresden's main square, where the city's cathedral extinguished its lights to show opposition to PEGIDA's message.

Earlier, German artist Kurt Fleckenstein placed 175 Muslim prayer mats in the main square.

"The installation is aimed against the assumptions of PEGIDA," said the 63-year-old artist from the south-western city of Mannheim, describing the work as an artistic statement for openness and tolerance.