About 50 Jewish activists broke up a neo-Nazi celebration of Hitler’s birthday here Saturday afternoon and later published a challenge to the government to prevent that sort of gathering.
The masked youths, wearing helmets, descended on the neo-Nazis with iron bars, baseball bats and tear gas grenades, injuring at least 11 of them.
By the time police arrived, the attackers were gone. The Nazis, shouting “Zionist assassins” and other anti-Semitic epithets, vented their anger on the police, injuring several.
According to the daily Liberation, the attack was mounted by a so-called Jewish Action Group, said to be a coalition of members of various militant Zionist organizations.
The newspaper published a statement by the group saying, “It is out of the question to allow former SS and National Front members to meet freely in Paris. The French Ministry of Interior has the means and duty to prevent this type of gathering.”
The National Front is an extreme right-wing political party led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has twice in the last month been fined by French courts for defaming Jews and is currently on trial in a Paris court for another such incident.
The Jewish Action Group added, “We shall use all means, including legal ones, to prevent this from happening.”
The neo-Nazis were setting up bookstalls with Nazi propaganda material to honor a French collaborationist journalist of the World War II period when they were attacked.
Hitler’s 102nd birthday, which fell on Saturday, triggered widespread violence in Germany, particularly the portion that was formerly East Germany.
Neo-Nazis were the aggressors in Dresden, Magdeburg and other cities. Scores of Skinheads and other right-wing extremists were arrested to prevent clashes with anti-fascist groups.
The German Jewish community expressed alarm over the rise of neo-Nazi violence in the former Communist-ruled territory.
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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.
