The State Prosecutor in Dusseldorf has dropped legal proceedings against Count Wilderich von Spee, former Mayor of Korschenbroich, who remarked to the town council’s financial committee last year that the way to balance the municipal budget was to “kill a few rich Jews.”
The Jewish community concurred in the decision to end the proceedings after von Spee was fined 90,000 Marks (about $41,000) which he donated to a children’s cancer hospital. The Dusseldorf Jewish community had filed charges against him for incitement to racial hatred. But the prosecution concluded that the anti-Semitic remark was an insult to Jews — for which von Spee was fine — but not incitement.
Von Spee was forced to resign as mayor when he lost the support of his political party, the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) which initially had defended him. His remark was the subject of a special debate in the Bundestag last month on resurgent anti-Semitism in the Federal Republic of Germany.
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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.
