A 15-year-old machinist’s apprentice was sentenced” to 20 hours work to repair damages caused when he persuaded four friends to join in smashing 30 tombstones in the Jewish cemetery of Sickenhofen, a village near Darmstadt.
Edmund Weiss, the apprentice, was held by the Offenbach Juvenile Court to be fully aware of his offense but the court ruled that his “immaturity” was a “mitigating circumstance.” His four friends, ranging in age from ten to twelve, were released because of their youth.
In Gelsenkirchen, 31 tombstones were smashed and a memorial tablet to Jewish victims of Nazism was demolished in that Ruhr city’s Jewish cemetery. Police reported that three 15-year-old boys, “not spurred on by political motivations” dislodged the half-ton gravestones which were fastened to the ground with heavy iron bars.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.