JANUARY 26, 13:07 EST Germany's Neo-Nazi Violence Surging By TONY CZUCZKA Associated Press Writer Demonstrators protest against Nazis AP/Sven Kaestner [31K] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- COTTBUS, Germany (AP) — For a 72-year-old German whose Jewish father was killed by the Nazis, the past came flooding back on New Year's Day. He and his wife were jarred out of bed by a loud bang. Hoodlums were kicking in their gate and shouting ``Come out! We'll beat you all to death!'' The youths moved on and no one was hurt. But most Germans took it as yet another shameful episode for a nation that has just experienced its worst year of neo-Nazi violence in a decade. As it marks its Holocaust remembrance day Saturday, Germany feels no closer to solving its extreme-right problem than it was five years ago, when it made the commemoration an annual fixture in hopes of educating a new generation about tolerance. Rachel Okun AP/Jockel Finck [20K] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ``It's frustrating for a committed person like myself — and there are many others like me,'' said Martina Muench, a councilwoman in Cottbus, the eastern city of 120,000 where the incident occurred. Since then, there has been another incident in Cottbus, in which ruffians assaulted and injured a Lebanese and a Ukrainian who were strolling with German friends. But it was the New Year's Day thuggery that raised an especially disturbing echo of the Nazis' rise 70 years ago. Extremists have usually vented their hatred of Jews by vandalizing synagogues and cemeteries; this time they seemed to be singling out an individual — one who was a slave laborer under the Nazi regime — simply for having a Jewish background. What came next didn't make things better. The young policemen who came to the couple's house offered them ``Schutzhaft'' — a term meaning protective custody but made notorious by the Gestapo as a euphemism for the jailing of Jews and political opponents. The German parliament on Friday -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ``Imagine what memories this triggered for me,'' the man said. ``I couldn't believe my ears.'' After German media reported it and Jewish leaders expressed outrage, the cops returned to apologize, and the couple say they accept that ``Schutzhaft'' was used in ignorance. Police mounted raids on rightist hangouts in the Cottbus area and seized weapons and propaganda material. Thousands of Cottbus people rallied against the extremists at the site of the city's former synagogue. The attack came at a time of worry about a notion that anti-Semitic taboos are fading among Germany's political and intellectual elite. Jewish leaders have been raising this concern for several years — that Germans are losing ``their sense of shame about expressing their prejudices,'' in the words of Paul Spiegel, the head of Germany's Jewish community. Rachel Okun of the recently revived Cottbus Jewish community said many of its 110 members told her they were afraid. ``I found no way to calm their fears,'' she said. The man whose gate was kicked in said he wants to believe the repeated assurances by politicians and civic leaders that most Germans reject neo-Nazi ideas. But the couple said they are so frightened they don't want their names published. Last year's jump in far-right crimes, to the worst levels since German unification in 1990, underscores the problem. Official figures due out this month record 840 violent anti-Semitic or anti-foreigner crimes in Germany in 2000, about 100 more than in 1999. Cottbus, like most of former East Germany, is still grappling with the economic and spiritual vacuum left by the fall of communism. The malaise is widely blamed for driving jobless young people to racist violence, but the wealthy west is not immune, as evidenced by a brutal attack on a Greek man by skinheads in Munich this month _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
