Vandals hit memorial to Kristallnacht

BERLIN -- Suspected Neo-Nazis scattered candles and tore up floral wreaths placed at a memorial stone on the 68th anniversary of Kristallnacht, police said yesterday.

Right: The Frankfurt Synagogue burns during Kystallnacht

The vandalism occurred Thursday at a memorial to Kristallnacht, or Night of the Broken Glass -- a prelude to the Holocaust that saw thousands of Jewish homes, synagogues, and businesses destroyed in 1938.

Police in the city of Frankfurt an der Oder said the group tore up wreaths on a stone marking the site where the synagogue stood before it was burned down on Kristallnacht.

Sixteen people between ages 16 and 24 were arrested. Police said some shouted "Sieg Heil" -- a common Nazi-era chant -- as officers moved in to apprehend them.

They were later released but remained under investigation for disrupting public order, disturbing the peace of the dead, and displaying Nazi symbols, which is a crime in Germany.

The town's mayor and residents held a second memorial ceremony yesterday to show their rejection of the acts. A court in another eastern town, Halbe, banned a neo-Nazi march today to a cemetery for German soldiers killed in World War II.

Brandenburg region Governor Matthias Platzeck called the actions an "intolerable provocation."

"Anyone who attacks wreaths and candles in memory of the millions of victims of the Holocaust shows that he has learned nothing from the greatest catastrophe in German history," Platzeck said.

Neo-Nazis remain a fringe group in Germany, but recent electoral successes by the far-right National Democratic Party have revived calls for more effective measures against extremism.

Right: The Frankfurt synagogue before
it was burn't down during Kristallnacht

On Nov. 9, 1938, Adolf Hitler's Nazis attacked Jewish homes and businesses throughout Germany in a prelude to the Holocaust. Thousands of synagogues and homes were burned, and about 90 Jews were murdered.
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Reference:

Boston.com: Vandals hit memorial

Jewish Virtual Library: Synagogues of the World [Germany]

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