German neo-Nazis attack Jewish memorial
Pastor Dale Morgan
German neo-Nazis attack Jewish memorial*
By Erik Kirschbaum
Reuters
Friday, November 10, 2006; 5:29 AM
BERLIN (Reuters) - German neo-Nazis, some shouting "Sieg Heil," rampaged
in the eastern city of Frankfurt on Oder and destroyed wreaths placed to
mark the anniversary of the 1938 Nazi pogrom against the Jews, police
said on Friday.
A police spokeswoman said the group had launched an attack on Thursday
evening, shortly after a memorial service by community and Jewish
leaders at a monument where a synagogue once stood.
She said the neo-Nazis trampled floral wreaths placed at a memorial
stone to the synagogue in the Polish border city that was destroyed 68
years ago in the Nazis' Kristallnacht or "Night of Broken Glass."
They threw away candles left at the memorial, which had been attended by
about 200 people. When police arrived, some of the neo-Nazis shouted
"Sieg Heil," police said. Authorities stayed on guard at the memorial
site through the night.
"We are still investigating but at this stage I can say we will at a
minimum be raising charges of using illegal symbols," state prosecutor
Michael Neff told Reuters.
A total of 16 people, aged 16-24, were detained after the attack, police
said.
Frankfurt on Oder is on the opposite side of the country's financial
capital in Frankfurt on the Main river. There are about 200 Jews living
in Frankfurt, a city of 63,000. There were about 800 in 1933.
ANTI-SEMITISM
Earlier on Thursday, President Horst Koehler, in a speech broadcast on
national television at the consecration of a new synagogue in Munich,
warned anti-Semitism was still present.
The Munich synagogue is near the building where Nazi propaganda chief
Josef Goebbels delivered the speech that paved the way for the November
9-10, 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom.
Roused by the speech, mobs destroyed hundreds of synagogues across
Germany and Austria, ransacked Jewish homes and stores and attacked
Jews, in some cases beating them to death.
Germany marks Kristallnacht in solemn ceremonies each year.
Germany's eastern states, plagued with high unemployment, have been a
hotbed of Germany's far-right movement. Extremists there have defied
police efforts to thwart the violence."
Frankfurt, 80 km (50 miles) east of Berlin on the Oder river, is in
Brandenburg, one of three ex-communist states where far-right parties
have won more than five percent of the state vote and hold seats in the
state assemblies.
The federal government has called a rise in anti-Semitic violence worrying.
Germany's BKA federal police released figures last month showing attacks
by far-right groups rose 20 percent to 8,000 in the first eight months
of 2006 compared to the same 2005 period.
In July, far-rightists in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt burned the
diary of Holocaust victim Anne Frank, causing outrage among German
politicians and anti-racist groups.
In another incident last month, teenagers in the same state forced a
16-year-old classmate to parade round school wearing a sign with an
anti-Semitic Nazi-era slogan.