The Central Council for Jews in Germany has urged federal and state authorities to tighten the laws relating to public gatherings in order to prevent abuses by neo-Nazi groups. The Council’s statement yesterday referred to the recent right-wing rally in a Munich beer hall where anti-Nazi activist Serge Klarsfeld was severely beaten and he and his wife, Beate, were forcibly removed.
Action should be taken against meetings where “war criminals are glorified and Nazi victims defamed under various pretexts,” the statement said. The Council found it “inconceivable that Nazi victims should be slandered by precisely those who helped contribute to the effects of World War II.”
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has learned, meanwhile, that Dr. Gerhard Frey, chairman of the right-wing Deutsche Volksunion which staged the Munich rally, has brought charges against the Klarsfelds. He accuses them “and other gang members” of “forming a criminal group, provoking and resisting the leadership of the meeting and causing public disorder and assault.”
The Central Council also protested against a decision by the Hamburg Senate to grant convicted war criminal Wilhelm Rosenbaum a six-month leave from prison for medical reasons. The Council said that the question of how such criminals are dealt with is “not one of re-socialization or crime prevention, but of the identity of democracy.”
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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.
