The state prosecutor in East Berlin has appealed against the relatively light sentences given by a district court there to four neo-Nazi thugs convicted of acts of violence last week.
The prosecutor contended that the one to two-year prison terms were not consistent with the nature of their offenses.
The four, members of a “skinhead” group, broke into the Zion Church in East Berlin on Oct. 17, shouting “Jewish pigs” and “send the Jews to the gas chambers.” They injured several congregants, some seriously, and damaged property.
The Zion Church, a Protestant denomination, is friendly to East Berlin’s tiny Jewish community with which it maintains a running dialogue. The prosecution had demanded sentences of up to four years.
The trial was unusual inasmuch as it was the first public admission by the East German authorities that neo-Nazis are active in the Communist Democratic Republic of Germany. They still maintain, in conversations with Western reporters, that the right-wing extremists were influenced by “subversive elements” in West Germany.
The “skinheads,” youthful roughnecks who wear Nazi-like uniforms, are a phenomenon that has surfaced recently in Western countries, including the United States. Most of them are aggressively anti-Semitic.
So far, the Jewish community in East Berlin has not been disturbed, but it is apprehensive. It sent observers to the trial of the four thugs.
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.
