Germany Commemorates Attacks Against Jews, Past and Present

Two painful events — on from the past, one from the present — were commemorated recently in Germany.

Gypsies and Social Democrats, two groups persecuted by the Nazis, were commemorated in ceremonies at the former Ravensbruck and Sachsenhausen death camps.

At Ravensbruck, Roman Rose, chairman of the Central Council of Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) in Germany, urged that all forms of discrimination be handled with a strong commitment.

Some 500,000 Gypsies were murdered during the war.

And at Sachsenhausen, Rudolf Scharping, leader of the opposition Social Democratic Party, urged all Germans to stand up against “the daily fascism” in that country.

Scharping spoke at ceremony commemorating the Social-Democrats who had been victims of the Nazi regime.

A few days before the ceremony, vandals daubed swastikas on a door in Sachsenhausen, officials said, adding that the swastikas and neo-Nazi slogans had been drawn in pencil. No one has been apprehended.

In 1989 and 1990, neo-Nazis torched two barracks at the camp. Those barracks, which have recently served as a Jewish museum, will be reconstructed in May for the 50th anniversary of the end of the war.

In an event commemorating a more recent atrocity, about 300 people gathered Sunday to remember last year’s burning of the synagogue in the German town of Lubeck.

The firebombing, on March 25, 1994, was the first such attack on a synagogue since the Nazi era.

Various speakers noted that the attack amounted to an assaut against the entire civilized society.

Four men in their 20s have been charged with arson and attempted murder and are awaiting trial. The defendants reportedly belong to an extreme right-wing group. According to the charge sheet, they were motivated by “hatred toward foreigners and Jews.

At the time of the fire, five people resided at the synagogue. They escaped unharmed, but the synagogue was badly damaged.