came from nowhere to win 13 percent of the vote in an election in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, according to provisional official results. The surge contrasted with a steep drop in support for Chancellor Helmut Kohl, whose Christian Democrats (CDU) fell 12 points to 22 percent. "The east is voting Kohl out of office," said Gerhard Schroeder, Kohl`s challenger in September`s federal election from the opposition Social Democrats (SPD). The SPD gained three percentage points to 36 percent. Saxony-Anhalt, a region of three million people east of Berlin, is one of six states created out of the former communist east Germany after reunification with west Germany eight years ago. It has the country`s highest unemployment, 25 percent, and lowest economic growth. Easterners` frustration with Kohl`s unfulfilled promises has soared. The reformed communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) won 20 percent in Sunday`s ballot, the penultimate state election before the September 27 federal vote. The environmental Greens fell out of the state assembly with 3.2 percent and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) also fell short of the five percent hurdle needed for representation with 4.2 percent. The DVU`s surge recalled another chapter in German history - the rise of Adolf Hitler`s Nazis in the early 1930s. Rightists and neo-Nazis have found fertile ground in the east where unemployment and anti-foreigner sentiment have risen amid the social upheaval that followed reunification. The party campaigned on a staunchly nationalist platform, blaming foreigners for taking German jobs. They blanketed the state with posters promising to take a tougher stance on "foreign criminals" and to find "jobs for Germans." Saxony-Anhalt has one of the lowest percentages of foreign residents in all of Germany - 1.9 percent. The DVU wants the repatriation of asylum-seekers and opposes abandoning the deutschemark for a single European currency. Their message appealed in particular to young unemployed easterners who have little or no prospect of finding a job. Protesters shouted "Nazi out" as Frey entered the state government building to meet the press after polls closed. Frey shot back that the voters had spoken. They also chased him to his bullet-proof car when he left. Germany`s constitutional watchdog accused the DVU in a 1996 report of creating anti-Semitic sentiment and racism. Since World War Two no far-right party has won more than 11 percent of the vote in any state or federal election. Germany`s Jewish leader Ignatz Bubis told the Neue Ruhr Zeitung daily he was horrified by the success of the right-wing extremists.