It was 5 a.m. on June 22, the start of a day that Philip Schmidt (a fictitious name) and a dozen of his neo-Nazi friends would likely remember for some time to come.
As day dawned, 60 police officers gathered at the picturesque Town Hall in this eastern German town, ready to strike at neo-Nazi youths.
In the best tradition of German precision, every detail was worked out advance. In a few minutes, the police would leave the building and knock on doors in different parts of this small town, population 21,300.
The purpose of the operation was to apprehend 11 youths who were suspected of having been involved in violent attacks on foreigners.
Embarking on the operation was a unique strike force bearing the rather awkward name of Special Commission to Combat the Violence of Rightist Extremists and Hatred of Aliens –abbreviated in German to SOKO REX.
The force was established two-and-a-half years ago to combat the steep rise in neo-Nazi violence and political activity — perhaps the single most alarming development in the former East Germany since the reunification of the two Germanys in October 1990.
“The police authorities were helpless at the time in the face of growing neo-Nazi violence,” said Commander Bernd Moerbitz, 37, the man who has headed the force since its inception in December 1991.
“The phenomenon of the radical right was unknown at the time,” said Moerbitz. “The young police force, still suffering from the shock of the transition from communism to democracy, didn’t know how to cope with the young hooligans.”
ARE POLICE RAIDS SUFFICIENT?
The new force, which is based in Dresden, capital of the eastern state of Saxony, was set up with the purpose of moving quickly to trouble spots and hitting hard at perpetrators of violent acts to prevent escalations of neo-Nazi violence.
It operates with the widest reach of any unit of its kind in Germany. Indeed, violent acts against foreigners in Saxony dropped from 287 in 1992 to 79 last year. And Moerbitz noted that some 90 percent of right-wing perpetrators of violent attacks are caught.
But the question remains whether such police raids are sufficient. Police statistics indicate there are some 1,000 neo-Nazis in Saxony alone.
Moerbitz is concerned that unless sufficient measures are taken, neo-Nazis could become better organized and pose a great threat,
Similar views were expressed by Marita Schifferdeker Adolph, of the Dresden municipality, working two years with eastern German youths.
“These youths pose a real threat to society,” Schifferdeker Adolph told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I am shocked by the anti-Semitic and anti-alien views held by them, with no apparent reason.”
Much of her alarm stemmed from the fact that most of these youths have never even met a Jew. There are hardly any Jews living in Saxony.
A number of incidents prompted the police action last week in Torgau, some 30 miles north of Dresden.
On June 6, a Pakistani asylum-seeker was attacked near a discotheque here. His assailants struck with baseball bats and cattle prods. On the same day, a youth club that serves as a meeting place for young foreigners was vandalized.
Almost three weeks later, Nguyen Van Dien, Vietnamese owner of a local restaurant, suffered serious wounds in an attack by a group of hooligans who clubbed the man with beer bottles.
That same night, Moerbitz switched on his computers to hunt for suspects known to be involved in the extreme right. Among the scores of arrests which followed, three suspects confessed to having taken part in the attacks.
They also led police to 11 more suspects.
An hour after the operation began, at exactly 6 a.m., police squads were knocking on the doors of suspects.
Philip Schmidt, 20, lives in a the basement of a nice suburban house, in typical teen quarters. He had no apparent reason to be an angry young man. He had a decent home, work, friends.
He is not identified by his real name because under German law he cannot be identified until a judge issues a warrant for his arrest.
His parents were surprised to find a couple of polite police officers knocking at their door with a search warrant in the early morning hours. They could not understand what they wanted.
“I wasn’t there,” was the only statement Philip Schmidt made as he left the house, handcuffed, led by the police to their waiting car.
But later, during a day-long interrogation, Schmidt and his friends blamed each other for the violence. Police said they would probably press charges against all of them. If convicted, they could each get as many as three years in jail.
“Can we prevent the spread of the right?” Moerbitz asked with clear skepticism. “I don’t know. But for sure we have to keep on trying.”
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