A spokesman for the West German Cabinet said today that Cabinet efforts to introduce legislation considered needed as a result of the recent outburst of anti-Semitic incidents in West Germany were hampered by the belief of the Jewish community in West Germany and of some numbers of the Bundestag that such legislation would not be helpful at this time.
Felix von Eckhardt, Secretary of State for Information, pointed out that the Cabinet had agreed some time ago to propose legislation which he said was “certainly needed” to lighten West German laws against racial and religious discrimination.
He said the basic problem was that while ample legislation existed to punish defacements of synagogues, there was no legislation which would enable a judge to pass out more severe sentences against persons who deface private homes with such hate emblems as the swastika. In most cases, he said, Judges usually sentence such daubers to maximum terms but those terms relate to acts of vandalism as such and not to the acts as aimed against a minority such as the Jewish community.
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