80 Attacks on Cemeteries Last Year,  German Jewish Leaders Say
   By ARTHUR ASHE
   BONN, sept 14 Germany (AP) - Right-wingers vandalized Jewish
cemeteries in Germany 80 times last year, Jewish community leaders
said Tuesday. They urged Chancellor Helmut Kohl to quickly crack down
on extremists.
   More attacks against Jewish cemeteries occurred last year than
from 1929 to 1933, the year Hitler took power, said Michel Friedman,
a member of the leadership council of Germany's 42,000-strong Jewish
community.
   Prosecutors in the eastern town of Frankfurt an der Oder on
Tuesday charged two 14-year-old boys with smashing tombstones and
painting swastikas on a Jewish graveyard in the village of Wriezen on
Sept. 3.
   A third 14-year-old was not charged because he is apparently
brain-damaged, the prosecutors said.
   In a speech to a gathering of his conservative Christian Democrats
on Monday, Kohl promised to crack down on neo-Nazis, whom he
described as a small minority that had hurt Germany's image abroad.
   German security agencies say 42,000 Germans belong to neo-Nazi
formations, but many of the more than 3,000 rightist attacks in the
last two years were the spontaneous acts of drunken or unruly youths.
   Kohl's party pledged Tuesday to foreswear any cooperation with
extremist parties, an important step since marginal rightist
candidates are likely to make gains in next year's state and federal
elections.
   "In view of the horrible events of the past two years, it is
essential for us to send this message to the world," Kohl said.
   Ignatz Bubis, the Jewish community's president, said at a news
conference to mark the Jewish New Year that he was cheered by Kohl's
comments.
   Kohl might have made them earlier, Bubis said, "but it's never too
late."
   The Jewish leaders did not appear pleased by Kohl's announcement
Monday that he supported Steffen Heitmann, the Saxony state justice
minister, to become Germany's next president.
   President Richard Weizsaecker, who must retire after ending his
second five-year term next year, has used the office to remind
Germans of the heavy responsibilities imposed by the country's Nazi
   Heitmann has a reputation as a blunt law-and-order man. The
General Anzeiger newspaper last week quoted him as saying, "those who
speak of brotherly love" toward foreigners "are not those whose
laundry is stolen from the clothesline every day."
   "At a time when Germany is defining its identity, the presidency
is a moral office," Friedman said in a telephone interview.
   Heitmann's comments, he said, "have not been marked
unconditionally by tolerance, pluralism and openness toward the
world.

Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor