Two thousand German trade unionists marched to a Jewish cemetery at Salzgitter Tuesday night to express their horror at the desecration of 80 graves by a gang of vandals last month.
The demonstrators were members of a metal trades union. They laid a wreath on a grave where the vandals had left a sign: “Germany Awake, Israel Perish.” The wreath was sent to Salzgitter by 2,300 schoolchildren in Protestant schools in West Germany who had collected money to purchase the floral offering.
The desecration of the Salzgitter cemetery, one of a series of such incidents, set off a storm of protest throughout West Germany and has led to offers of rewards by federal and local authorities for the apprehension of the gang. So far, neither local nor national police assigned to the case have turned up clues to the identity of the vandals.
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