The desecration of a Jewish cemetery at Salzgitter, one of a regularly recurring series of such incidents in West Germany, had produced widespread criticism which led both local and federal officials to post reward offers today to aid the hunt for the vandals.
Eighty headstones were overturned in the cemetery on April 19, and a straw figure daubed with an inscription, ”Germany Awake, Israel Perish,” was hung from one of the cemetery memorials. The Bonn Ministry of the Interior ordered the federal criminal police to join the investigation being carried on by the Salzgitter municipality, which is restoring the gravestones.
Statements condemning the desecration were issued by the Christian Democratic Union, the Social Democratic party, and the German Trade Union Federation. The Hamburg Society for Jewish-Christian Cooperation, in an appeal signed by former chairman Erich Lueth, ”beseeched” West German authorities to provide more effective protection for Jewish cemeteries. It called upon the German youth to ”prevent with all the strength of heart and soul” the disturbance ”of the peace of these dead.”
Students at Bonn University, in telegrams to the Central Jewish Council in Germany and to the Israel Mission in Cologne, expressed ”horror and disgust,” and said that the desecration had ”spurred them to continue” their struggle against anti-Semitism” more energetically than before.”
Dr. H.G. Vandam, general secretary of the Jewish Central Council, warned against under-estimating the significance of the vandalism, noting there had been a tendency to consider each of the many incidents an isolated case. He said this attitude must be abandoned after the Salzgitter incident.
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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.
