German Security Agencies Confirm Polls’ Findings That Anti-semitism is Still Strong in the Country

A public opinion poll showing that anti-Semitism is still strong in West Germany has been confirmed by security services which reported that anti-Semitic incidents have increased alarmingly in the country over the past year.

According to a public opinion poll conducted by sociologist Badi Panahi, 50 percent of those surveyed have negative feelings bout Jews and one-third have very strong anti-Semitic prejudices. Just before this poll was published in Stern magazine, a government survey published last week in Der Spiegal news magazine showed that 18 percent of West German voters believe “Germany had it better under Hitler.”

The poll published in Stern said that 27 percent of West Germans believe “some races are predisposed to be more immoral than others”; 14 percent believe “you have to keep in mind that Jews exercise a damaging influence on Western Christian culture”; 56 percent did not share this view; 16 percent rejected it “moderately,” and 10.5 percent rejected it “weakly.” According to Stern, despite the disclosure of Nazi murders and the telecasting of such films as the “Holocaust,” anti-Jewish prejudices have still not died out.

INCREASE IN VANDALISM, DESECRATIONS

Meanwhile, security agencies reported 42 incidents of vandalism against Jewish cemeteries, monuments and synagogues in 1980 compared to 35 in 1979. There were 44 cases in which Jewish activists were threatened or plots were uncovered to murder Jewish leaders. Most of these developments were concentrated in recent months.

In the Cologne suburb of Deutz, 30 Jewish gravestones were destroyed and others daubed with slogans such as “Adolf (Hitler) Lives.” In the old Jewish cemetery in Aschafenburg, 87 gravestones were desecrated last November and partially destroyed. In August, 1980, 152 gravestones were overturned and damaged in the same cemetery and similar crimes were committed in more recent months in Worms and Bad Hersfeld.

Large-scale damage to Jewish gravestones were reported from Frankfurt, the city with the second largest Jewish community in West Germany. Swastikas and Nazi slogans were daubed on the stones. A monument at the site of the old synagogue in Frankfurt and another Jewish site in a public park were defaced with anti-Semitic slogans. Police reported evidence of close cooperation between German and non-German extremist groups, the latter notably Palestinians supporting the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Security services were increasingly concerned with new evidence of contacts between neo-Nazis in West Germany and El Fatah, the terrorist arm of the PLO. Many members of the outlawed “Wehrsportgruppe Hoffman,” a neo-Nazi paramilitary organization masquarading as a sports club, have received training at PLO camps in Lebanon. The leader of the group, Karl-Heinz Hoffman, visited Beirut several times in recent months and was hosted there by the PLO. The government is reported to be playing down these facts for fear of harming its relations with the Arab countries.

URGES NEW LAWS TO COMBAT EXTREMISM

Reacting to this wave of anti-Semitic incidents and to the government survey which showed that 18 percent of West Germans feel that life was better under Hitler, Heinz Galinski, chairman of West Berlin’s Jewish community, urged new laws to combat neo-Nazism and rightwing extremism. He noted in a radio interview that his past warnings about a rightwing revival had been dismissed as exaggerated.