Two new desecrations of Jewish cemeteries in West Germany were reported today in the wake of the anti-Semitic smearings of the Bamberg Jewish cemetery and of a memorial to the synagogue in Bamberg razed by the Nazis in 1938.
Unknown vandals desecrated the Jewish cemetery near Koblenz Tuesday night and rose bushes and flower pots were overturned and uprooted at the Jewish cemetery in Weissenthurm. Rewards of 5, 000 marks ($1, 700) were offered by local officials and police began a search for the vandals. Dr. Ludwig Martin, the federal prosecutor general, announced in Karlsruhe, he had begun an investigation to determine whether to take action in the Bamberg desecrations.
The publishers of the two newspapers of Bamberg, the scene recently of the most vicious acts of anti-Semitic vandalism in postwar Germany, said today they would hereafter report any new anti-Semitic acts with maximum brevity. They expressed belief that the lengthy reports on the daubings of tombstones in the town’s Jewish cemetery and the smearing of a monument to the synagogue razed in 1938 by the Nazis prompted Bamberg youngsters to emulate such acts.
The German Jewish weekly, the Allgemeine Wochenzeitung, said that the new wave of anti-Semitic actions indicated that potential murderers still lived in West Germany and that it was not true that an unmistakable change in basic German attitudes toward Jews had taken place at broad levels.
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.
