Scenes reminiscent of the Hitler era are occurring in Germany, with intensive violence by neo-Nazis and Skinheads leading to injuries and, last week, even death.
In one of several attacks against foreigners in Germany, an African asylum-seeker was killed and two others seriously injured Sept. 19, in a fire attack on a hostel in Saarlouis, a town in the Saarland near the French border.
The hostel, housing some 30 asylum-seekers, was badly damaged. No arrests were made.
The same hostel was attacked recently, but all inhabitants had ample warning to evacuate before that assault. Saarlouis has seen several neo-Nazi attacks recently.
And another furious assault took place last Saturday night in Hoyerswerda, in former East Germany, close to Poland. It, too, was the latest of a series of attacks in the same town.
In the Saturday attack, another heavily guarded hostel housing foreigners was attacked by neo-Nazis, as hundreds of townspeople cheered.
Five refugees were injured, two of them seriously, in that assault. There were 16 arrests.
On Sunday, police in Hoyerswerda evacuated about 60 foreigners from the hostel as a protective measure.
More than 20 people have been hurt in Hoyerswerda, and property damage there has been estimated at $1.3 million.
Attacks on foreigners seeking political asylum have also been reported in Hamburg and Stuttgart, both in former West Germany. In suburbs near Dresden, police barely prevented attacks on two other hostels for foreigners.
‘NO PLACE FOR US IN GERMANY’
On Sunday, a convoy of human rights activists came from Berlin to demonstrate solidarity with the Hoyerswerda refugees, but found most of them too frightened to stay.
“There is no place for us in Germany,” one said. “It is a dangerous place for non-Germans.”
The peril has been greatest in former East Germany where neo-Nazi groups apparently enjoy wide popular support and sometimes even get help from local police chiefs.
Such conditions were commonplace in Germany in the early 1930s. Even before Hitler came to power, brownshirt thugs beat up Jews, leftists and others on the streets, while bystanders applauded or looked away.
But it seems to observers that the government’s current response to the situation has been to try to mollify the neo-Nazis instead of cracking down on them.
On Sunday, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaueble urged the opposition Social Democratic Party to support government legislation that would drastically limit the entry of foreigners into the country. It is the only way to prevent the escalation of hatred against them, he said.
The government last month rejected proposals by the Jewish community to tune up the legal machinery to deal swiftly with neo-Nazi violence.
The proposals were repeated Sunday by Heinz Galinski, the Jewish community chairman, in the aftermath of the violence in Hoyerswerda.
The German government on Monday issued a statement condemning the violence, but blamed it largely on the legacy of East German communism.
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.
