The normally peaceful Bavarian town of Wunsiedel near the Czechoslovakian border braced for violence and terror over the weekend as the funeral for Adolf Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess, who died last week in an apparent suicide, drew throngs of European neo-Nazis under heavy police protection.
Police said Sunday more than 200 had arrived in Hess’ hometown for the funeral expected to take place Wednesday and many more were in transit including neo-Nazi sympathizers from Britain and The Netherlands. Police detained 88 neo-Nazis in the area in the past two days.
A group of neo-Nazis dressed in black and some masked marched into the cemetery where Hess requested to be buried, shouting “Revenge for Hess,” and signaling the “Heil Hitler” Nazi salute. Local officials later banned all open gathering in the town related to Hess and closed off the cemetery to the unwelcome visitors.
In Frankfurt, police arrested two young neo-Nazis who placed a bomb which did not go off in the city’s central railway station.
Hess’ funeral has been delayed by a request for a second autopsy by his son Wolf-Rucdiger Hess, who has disputed the findings of prison officials that Hess, 93, committed suicide with an electrical wire. Hess died in Spandau prison, controlled by the four wartime Allied powers, the U.S. France, Britain and the Soviet Union. He was the sole prisoner in Spandau for more than two decades.
Hess sympathizers demonstrated outside the embassies of the four Allied powers over the weekend and distributed flyers claiming Hess did not commit suicide but was actually murdered.
West Germany’s Internal Security Service prepared for increased neo-Nazi violence and terror and beefed up security all around the small town.
Hess, the last remaining high-ranking official in the Nazi hierarchy, lived in Spandau since 1946 when he was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Nuremberg trials. He was captured in Scotland in 1941 when he parachuted into Britain in what some claim was an effort to negotiate a peace between Britain and Germany.
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.
