Jewish Leaders Express Disgust over Arson at Sachsenhausen Site

Jewish organizational leaders have deplored the burning of a Holocaust memorial at the site of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany.

The destruction late Friday of a barracks housing the memorial in the town of Oranienburg, north of Berlin, was a “shocking, sick and disgusting” act, said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

“This is the second time within a month that a Holocaust memorial has been attacked, and we call for a swift and thorough investigation,” he said in a statement Sunday.

Two weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin visited the Sachsenhausen barracks, which also housed an exhibition on Nazi anti-Semitism.

In Jerusalem, Rabin issued a statement saying the apparent arson is “more proof how dangerous is the rising tide of neo-Nazis who are trying to wipe out the memory of the Holocaust and to hurt anything which is foreign to their sick racial conceptions.

“Such phenomena should be uprooted,” he said, “and the German government should make all possible efforts that such efforts will not repeat themselves.”

The torching was described by the new chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany as “a vicious sacrilege.”

Ignatz Bubis told Sunday’s B.Z. am Sonntag newspaper: “”This is a sign from rightists that they are not only anti-foreigner, but also into neo-Nazism.”

The arson at Sachsenhausen is the second desecration of a Holocaust memorial in Germany in the past month. Three men accused of setting off a bomb Aug. 30 at a Holocaust memorial in Berlin have been arraigned, according to reports from that city.