Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: 100,000 Germans protest neo-Nazis' violence Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 15:13:22 EST Message-ID: \SE A;WORLD \SS (WS) \HD 100,000 Germans protest neo-Nazis' violence \BY ASSOCIATED PRESS \DT BERLIN BERLIN (AP) - Nearly 100,000 Germans demonstrated across the country yesterday to mark the 54th anniversary of the Nazis' "Crystal Night" attacks on Jews and to protest recent neo-Nazi violence. Yesterday also was the third anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall. The German celebration of that watershed was somber after violence by anarchists Sunday disrupted a huge Berlin rally against right-wing extremism. The violence prompted Chancellor Helmut Kohl's chief of staff, Friedrich Bohl, to urge tougher laws allowing police to act against troublemakers in advance. But Mr. Bohl conceded the lack of political consensus for such laws. Mr. Kohl's conservative coalition partner, the Christian Social Union, boycotted Sunday's rally and demanded that the government take steps to stem the flood of refugees. President Richard von Weizsaecker, who was splattered with eggs by the anarchists, said in a national TV appearance yesterday that he was ready to be in more protests to show solidarity with foreigners. Nazi thugs attacked synagogues and Jewish homes and businesses throughout Germany on Nov. 9, 1938, killing more than 90 Jews, arresting 30,000 and leaving so much broken glass it became known as "Crystal Night." It marked the start of open persecution of Jews and ushered in the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of 6 million European Jews. Commemorative marches were also held in Rome yesterday, where about 10,000 people beneath flickering torches wound through the Italian capital's old Jewish ghetto. At the head of the column were seven concentration camp survivors locked arm-in-arm. In Tel Aviv, dozens of Israelis marched outside the German Embassy to protest anti-foreigner violence. In Bremen, about 1,000 people at a ceremony heard Ignatz Bubis, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, admonish political leaders to stand up to extreme rightists. Mr. Bubis said weak leadership was a prime cause of the collapse of Germany's post-World War I democracy, the Weimar Republic. But Berlin Mayor Eberhard Diepgen said the important thing was the huge turnout at Sunday's rally - not the leftist protests. "The democrats came out - 350,000 and more - and demonstrated in Berlin. That didn't happen in the Weimar Republic, and that is the difference," he said. Yesterday, more than 50,000 people attended a "Rock Against Rightists" concert in Cologne, and some 20,000 marched against intolerance in Munich. Yesterday was the third anniversary of the end of Berlin's division with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The euphoria of unification gave way long ago to worries about the cost of merging the country's bankrupt formerly communist eastern lands with its long-prosperous west. The burden is compounded by the cost of caring for tens of thousands of foreign asylum seekers, which has bred resentment among many Germans and fueled attacks on foreigners by rightists. But Berlin granted its highest award - honorary citizenship - to former President Ronald Reagan, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Mr. Kohl for their roles in ending the Cold War. Mr. Reagan did not attend but sent an aide, Fred Ryan. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM