Formal charges were filed in Cologne today against Arnold Strunk and Paul Schoenen, the 25-year-old members of the right-wing Deutsche Reichs Party who were arrested as suspects in the Christmas Eve smearing of the Cologne synagogue which touched off the world-wide spurt of anti-Semitic manifestations.
The two defendants, who were expelled by the party immediately after their arrest, were charged with damaging a house of God and an anti-Nazi memorial, “with anti-constitutional intentions, ” with insulting a religious society, with committing a wrong against a memorial, and with using the emblems of a Nazi organization. Cologne court officials said the case would probably be heard early in February.
A spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior said today that the Government had not yet decided to apply to the courts for a ban on the Deutsche Reichs Party because it did not yet have enough evidence.
A rash of swastika and slogan daubings, similar to those in West Germany, has occurred in East Germany, the Times of London reported today.
In Washington, the State Department said today that the Berlin Documents Center had not clamped down totally on information about ex-Nazis but was handling requests on a new, case-by -case basis. State Department spokesman Lincoln White said the Center’s files of Nazi party records was “incomplete, ” and contained “unevaluated” information. “Uncontrolled use of such documents, therefore, in many cases may result in doing an injustice to persons now living, ” said White.
The Berlin Document Center contains the “Nazi Party’s central membership file, a complete card index captured in Munich in 1945, Nazi correspondence, personnel files of the SS Elite Guard and records of the Nazi ‘peoples’ courts. “
National security and local police officials reported arrests of suspects connected with recent incidents in Foggia and Genoa, Italy, and Oslo, Norway.
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.
