Anti-Semitic Attacks in Germany in 2007

This page is part of a section on "2007 List of Anti-Semitic Attacks" maintained by PaulaSays. This is only a partial list. If you know of an attack not reported on these pages, please send a note to: .

  • January: A Holocaust memorial in the German city of Verden, Lower Saxony state, was burnt into ruins in the small hours of Friday. The arson was most likely cause of a fire which burnt out a railway carriage dating back to the Nazi era. The carriage had been established by students from a vocational school as a memorial for Holocaust victims.
  • February: A Jewish preschool in Berlin, Germany was vandalized on Sunday. The vandals drew swastikas on the walls of the building. They also threw a smoke grenade into one of the rooms. The grenade failed to ignite. BERLIN However, the school, located in a northwest neighbourhood of the German capital, was not spared by the spray painting of swastikas, other Nazi symbols and anti-Semitic phrases, such as “Auschwitz,” “Juden Raus” (Jews, get out) and “Sieg Heil”, on its outer walls, as well as on toys that had been lying around in the school’s playground. A police spokesman said the attack did not cause serious damage or endanger children or staff at the school.
  • The German authorities were preparing for criticism from the Jewish community after it was revealed that a Holocaust memorial in Berlin was being used as a public bathroom by tourists and by neo-Nazi sympathizers.
  • An 18th century Jewish cemetery in Bavaria has been desecrated. More than half of the 60 tombstones that the vandals toppled were beyond repair, according to police in the southern German state.
  • March: German police said on Thursday they were investigating four youths for spraying sheep with swastikas, the cross-like symbol used by the Nazis. The youths, between the ages of 15 and 18, painted swastikas on several sheep out of a herd of around 30 near the northwestern town of Etzenborn, police said.
  • Justice achieved: A German court on Thursday convicted far-right activist Ernst Zundel of incitement for denying the Holocaust, and sentenced him to the maximum five years in prison. The 67-year-old, who was deported from Canada in 2005, was convicted on 14 counts of incitement for years of anti-Semitic activities, including denying the Holocaust, a crime in Germany, in documents and on the Internet.
  • Justice achieved: A German court gave five far-right supporters in eastern Germany nine-month suspended sentences on Thursday for ceremonially burning a copy of the diary of Holocaust victim Anne Frank.
  • Vandals daubed a swastika in red paint on a Berlin memorial to the Nazis' Jewish victims in April. The roughly meter-high swastika appeared during the night on the Levetzowstrasse memorial, which marks the site of a former synagogue and one of the places where Jews were gathered during World War II for deportation to concentration camps. A similar symbol was found on a nearby memorial plaque, police said; both swastikas were removed.
  • For the second time in days, neo-Nazi graffiti was scrawled Friday on a German monument commemorating Jewish women and the thousands of concentration camp victims killed on forced marches during World War II. Police in the eastern town of Soemmerda said they had no idea who had painted swastikas on the pillar during the night. The monument marks the last terrible act of the Nazis, who forced weakened inmates of the camps in 1945 to trek away from alied armies. Thousands died of exhaustion only days before the German defeat. Thuringia state police said neo-Nazis had repeatedly attacked the monument. Authorities have been regularly scrubbing off the graffiti. Neo-Nazi graffiti was also daubed on a Left Party office in the town and on walls of the home of the mayor, Wolfgang Floegel, who is a leftist.
  • In May, at a soccor game between two teams (of 14-year-olds) in Eastern Germany, racist insults were screamed. During the game, the fans struck up a welcoming chorus for the visiting junior soccer team: "We'll build a subway from Chemnitz to Auschwitz..." You "Fiji pigs," they yelled at two 14-year-olds who were subbed in. You "foreigner pigs!" They made monkey noises every time they touched the ball. They also targeted the 14-year-old goalkeeper from the visiting team: "Jewish pig, go f**k your Jewish mother," they yelled. However, the fans didn't just target the visiting team, they even abused one of the linesman, yelling, "Get it right, Jew, or we'll come and pull your foreskin off."it wasn't just the fans that yelled anti-Semitic comments.
  • May 20, 2007Berlin – A teenager beat a 16-year-old identifiably Jewish boy as he stepped off a train. Shortly before the incident, the assailant and a group of other youths had shouted anti-Semitic remarks at the victim.
  • July 11, 2007 – Berlin – A Holocaust memorial at a Berlin train station was vandalized. Several candles near the train tracks were knocked over and an Israeli flag was burned. The memorial commemorates the more than 50,000 Jews who were deported from the site to concentration camps during the Holocaust.
  • In August, more than 70 gravestones were knocked over in the Jewish cemetery in Ihringen in southwestern Germany. After police arrested four suspected right-wing extremists, three of the four, aged between 15 and 28, admitted to committing the vandalism. The cemetery was previously vandalized twice in the 1990s.
  • In September: A rabbi in Frankfurt was stabbed on Friday, apparently by an Arab, reports said. The rabbi was moderately wounded and managed to get to the hospital under his own power, police said. The rabbi said he was approached by the man Friday night, and when he asked his assailant what he wanted, the Arab pulled out a knife and started cursing him in German and Arabic.
  • A small town in southern Germany says it is being terrorized by neo-Nazis and has initiated a campaign to counter monthly demonstrations by extremists seeking access to a war memorial to commemorate Germany's fallen "heroes." The next rally by the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) is scheduled for Sunday, Remembrance Day. Neo-Nazis said they plan to gather in the market square of the picturesque Bavarian town of Grafenberg, population 4,100. "We are pretty stunned that the NPD should be allowed to celebrate warlike heroism with torches, a steel helmet and drums in our city," said Monika Michael of Grafenberg's Citizens' Forum, a group organized a year ago to stop the NPD demonstrations. Grafenberg comes to a virtual standstill once a month during the rallies by 50 to 250 members of NPD. Germany's domestic intelligence service describes the group as "racist, anti-Semitic and revisionist." The NPD announced last year that it would stage monthly demonstrations in the town until the local council allows its members unrestricted access to the memorial, a grand rotunda on a hill topped with the German iron cross. "We're being terrorized by the NPD. We're in a state of siege once a month. Our businesses are suffering because people won't come into town and there are police checkpoints everywhere," said Michael Helmbrecht, spokesman for the Citizens' Forum. Matthias Fischer, regional chairman of the NPD, said his party plans to continue its protests.


 

© by Paula Stern. All rights reserved.

Recent Articles

Articles

Paula's

News Corner

Click here to download a powerful PowerPoint presentation about the reality of Kassam rockets striking Israel. Warning: Some of the pictures are graphic...

Kassem PowerPoint


A site about Israel, being Jewish and living in a world where things aren't always bright and shiny, but where there is always hope that tomorrow will be better. 

This site is dedicated to the people who inspire me to stop what I am doing and write. 


To my husband, to my children. To my parents and sister and brother, and their families. To my brothers-in-laws and sisters-in-law.


To the victims of terrorism over the last few years. 


To the soldiers of Israel.


To mothers. 


To the Jews who are no more, and to the Jews yet to be.


To those around the world who understand that the path to peace is not reached through violence, to my Arab friends and neighbors.

To my international friends and email pals...

in short, this site is dedicated to those who have touched my life, and in so doing, have brought forth my words.

 

 

Powered by Netdoc CMS