Two German neo-Nazis were sentenced to prison last week after a retrial on charges that they had set fire to a Jewish museum at the site of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
The state court in the eastern German city of Potsdam found the two guilty Oct. 5, after a juvenile court released the defendants in October 1993 after a trial the drew widespread condemnation.
Ignatz Bubis, chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, termed the new verdict “correct and important.” Bubis said he had been “astonished” at their acquittal in the earlier trial.
After the first trial, the Federal Appeals Court, Germany’s highest criminal court, ordered a retrial of the two, who were accused of the September 1992 arson attack on the Jewish museum, which was located in former concentration camp barracks.
The museum was completely destroyed in the blaze.
The fire prompted widespread protests against neo-Nazi violence.
The Potsdam court, saying it had obtained sufficient evidence to convict the two, sentenced Ingo Kehn, a 22-year-old student from Berlin, to 21/2 years in jail; Thomas Haberland, a railway official, 25, from the eastern city of Prenzlau, was sent to jail for three years.
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.
