German unrest
BERLIN - German neo-Nazis, some shouting "Sieg Heil," rampaged through the eastern city of Frankfurt an der Oder and destroyed wreaths placed to mark the anniversary of the 1938 Nazi pogrom against the Jews, police said yesterday.
A police spokeswoman said the group had launched an attack on Thursday evening, soon after a memorial service by community and Jewish leaders at a monument where a synagogue once stood.
The neo-Nazis trampled floral wreaths placed at a memorial stone to the synagogue in the city on the Polish border that was destroyed 68 years ago in the Nazis' Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, police said.
They threw away candles left at the memorial ceremony, which had been attended by about 200 people. When police arrived, some of the neo-Nazis shouted "Sieg Heil!"
One eyewitness was quoted in a media report as saying he saw three of the neo-Nazis urinating on the memorial stone.
A total of 16 people, aged 16 to 24, were detained after the attack, police said.
"I'm horrified," said Matthias Platzeck, Brandenburg state premier. "It is a provocation beyond all bearing. Anyone who attacks flowers and candles for the millions of Holocaust victims hasn't learned a thing about the greatest disaster in German history."
About 150 people responded to an appeal by Martin Patzelt, the city's Mayor, and gathered at the memorial yesterday morning, some placing new floral wreaths and candles.
Michael Neff, a Brandenburg state prosecutor, said charges and arrest warrants were being prepared.
"We are still investigating but at this stage I can say we will at a minimum be laying charges of using illegal symbols," he said.
Other charges could include inciting racial hatred and breach of public peace.
There are about 200 Jews living in Frankfurt an der Oder, a city of 63,000. There were about 800 in 1933 when Adolf Hitler's Nazis took power. After the Second World War, the city became part of Communist-ruled East Germany. It is not to be confused with Frankfurt am Main, the financial capital, in western Germany.
Earlier on Thursday, Horst Koehler, the German President, in a speech broadcast on national television at the consecration of a new synagogue in Munich, warned anti-Semitism was still present.
During the Kristallnacht pogrom on Nov. 9-10, Nazi 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's eastern states, plagued with high unemployment, have been a hotbed of the country's far-right movement. Extremists there have defied police efforts to thwart the violence.
Frankfurt, 80 kilometres east of Berlin on the Oder river, is in Brandenburg, one of three former communist states where far-right parties won enough votes for state parliament seats.
The federal government has called a rise in anti-Semitic violence worrying. Police said last month attacks by far-right groups rose 20% in the first eight months of 2006.
In July, extremists in the neighbouring state of Saxony-Anhalt burned a copy of the diary of Holocaust victim Anne Frank.
In another incident, teens in the same state last month forced a 16-year-old classmate to parade round school wearing a sign with an anti-Semitic Nazi-era slogan.
Reuters
© National Post 2006
