A 15-year-old machinist’s apprentice was sentenced” to 20 hours work to repair damages caused when he persuaded four friends to join in smashing 30 tombstones in the Jewish cemetery of Sickenhofen, a village near Darmstadt.
Edmund Weiss, the apprentice, was held by the Offenbach Juvenile Court to be fully aware of his offense but the court ruled that his “immaturity” was a “mitigating circumstance.” His four friends, ranging in age from ten to twelve, were released because of their youth.
In Gelsenkirchen, 31 tombstones were smashed and a memorial tablet to Jewish victims of Nazism was demolished in that Ruhr city’s Jewish cemetery. Police reported that three 15-year-old boys, “not spurred on by political motivations” dislodged the half-ton gravestones which were fastened to the ground with heavy iron bars.
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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.
