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Sat Dec 9 18:55:16 1995
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The violence that erupted in Germany over the past several years brought to public attention the neo-Nazi Skinheads, a group previously regarded as only a fringe segment of the youth scene. Operating as lossely knit gangs of juvenile thugs, their menacing presence has been noted in communities throughout the recently united country. They have swelled the ranks of right-wing street demonstrators, acted as security guards for neo-Nazi meetings and served as a ready reservoir for extremist agitators to tap for attacks on so-called aliens in German society. From the riotous assaults on foreigners in Hoyerswerda in 1991 to the waves of firebombings and beatings that have followed to this day, the Skinheads have been the main attack dogs.
Molotov Cocktails
September 17, 1991 - Skinheads armed with clubs, rocks and Molotiv cocktails attacked a building in Hoyerswerda, an eastern city that housed about 150 foreigners, mostly from Vietnam and Mozambique. Hundreds of local residents gathered to cheer the Skinheads and resist attempts by police to quell the rampage. The assault and public demonstrations of support continued for days, ultimately ending on September 23, with the evacuation of the besieged housing unit.
August 22-28, 1992 - Rostock, in eastern Germany, was the scene of several nights of Skinhead violence against a hostel housing 200 asylum seekers (mainly Gypsies) and 150 Vietnamese guest workers. The hostel was partially destroyed by the 150 attacking Skinheads, who were openly encouraged by at least 500 cheering residents. Authorities evacuated the asylum seekers on August 24, and the guest workers fled as the building was being torched. Once again, violence rewarded the Skinheads with victory; the Interior Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the state in which Rostock is located, was subsequently dismissed for having failed to immediately order the police to quell the riot.
November 13, 1992 - Two Skinheads in Wuppertal (in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia) kicked and burned to death a man they mistakenly thought was Jewish, after the owner of the bar in which the victim and perpetrators were drinking shouted, "Jew! You must go to Auschwitz. Auschwitz must reopen! Jews must burn!" The Skinheads kicked the victim until he lost consciousness, poured schnapps on him and set him on fire. He died of internal injuries while the Skinheads drove to the Netherlands in the victim's car, where they dumped the body. In February 1994, the two Skinheads and the bar owner were convicted of murder and given sentences of 14, 8 and 10 years, respectively.
Child Killing
November 23, 1992 - Two Skinheads, aged 19 and 25, firebombed two houses in Moelln, Schleswig-Holstein, killing a Turkish woman, her 10-year-old granddaughter, and 14-year-old niece. Several others were severely injured. The perpetrators telephoned the police station and announced, "There's a fire in the Ratzeburger Strasse. Heil Hitler!" They made an identical call to the fire brigade regarding the second address. Michael Peters and Lars Christiansen were tried and convicted in December 1993, and sentenced to life imprisonment, and 10 years, respectively.[1]
May 29, 1993 - Four Skinheads were charged with setting fire to a home in Solingen, North Rhine-Westphalia, killing five Turkish citizens. Three girls, aged 4, 9 and 12, and an 18-year-old woman, died in the flames. Another victim, a 27-year-old woman, died of injuries suffered when she leaped from a window. Ten others were injured. Neighbors reported hearing the arsonists shout "Heil Hitler!" The Skinheads were indicted for murder, attempted murder, and arson. Their trial began in April 1994 and was expected to continue for many months.
October 29, 1993 - A group of Skinheads chanting, "Nigger out!" attacked members of the American Olympic luge team training in Oberhof, Thuringia, after a confrontation in a nearby discotheque. Two of the attackers were convicted in January 1994. One was sentenced to one year, the other to two years and eight months. A third was placed on probation for two years.
March 25, 1994 - A synagogue was firebombed in the northern port city of Luebeck. No injuries were reported, but the synagogue was badly damaged. Four right-wing extremists, ranging in age from 19 to 24, were placed under arrest. While three of them were found guilty of arson and the fourth of complicity in the fire-bombing, they were acquitted of attempted murder even though people were in the synagogue at the time. They were given sentences ranging from two and a half to four and a half years. (Arsonists again attacked the Luebeck synagogue on the night of May 6, 1995, even as elsewhere commemorations of the 50th anniversay of the Nazi surrender in World War II were beginning. Among the ceremonies was a rededication in Berlin - attended by more than 2,000 people, including German Chancellor Helmut Kohl - of a major synagogue destroyed during the war.)
May 12, 1994 - A mob of about 150 youths rampaged against foreigners in Magdeburg, an eastern German city. They beat five Africans on a downtown street and then chased them into a Turkish-owned cafe where four of the assailants were stabbled by cafe employees. Forty-nine rioters - described by police as drunken hooligans and Skinheads - were arrested and release in a few hours. Officials said they were not sure they had enough evidence to bring charges. Four days later charges were finally brought against a 19-year-old, identified as a ringleader of the riot and head of a local neo-nazi group of about 80 members. Commenting on this event, Germany's then-President Richard von Weizsaecker said: "It is hard to understand how, as we see from television pictures, hoodlums or right-wing extremists can charge through the streets, breaking windows and attacking people, and then 50 or more are arrested, but that same night they're all released." Eventually, a number of additional suspects were prosecuted; nine were sentenced to prison or juvenile terms ranging from 14 months to three and a half years.
July 23, 1994 - Twenty-two neo-Nazi Skinheads desecrated the memorial grounds at the site of the former Buchenwald concentration camp. Arriving by bus from the nearby towns of Erfurt and Gera, the Skinheads ran wild, throwing stones and chanting Nazi slogans. They threatened to set on fire a woman staffer who tried to stop them. When the police arrived, they interrogated the group and released all but one. Criticizing this tepid police response, Ignatz Bubis, the chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said: "The way the authorities have handled this case and others is an open invitation to repeat the vandalism." Two of the police officials were subsequently suspended, three others were scheduled for disciplinary action, and the rampaging youths were re-arrested. In October, the leader of the Skinhead gang was sentenced to 20 months in jail and five others, all minors, recied suspended sentences or fines.
September 1994 - Sachsenhausen, the former Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, has been repeatedly vandalized. The camp is maintained as a memorial to the victims of Nazi barbarism. Four Skinheads were caught there on September 2 shouting Nazi slogans. Earlier, guards found Nazi swastikas painted on camp property. On September 4, the unused bakery on the campsite burned down. Previously, a hut containing an exhibit about the Holocaust was destroyed.
Passengers Assaulted
These are among the more dramatic events that have been reported with shock and horror, but numerous other acts of violence have occured and - at a lesser pace - continue to take place to this day: assaults on individuals, brawls in youth centers, attacks on homes and businesses. For example, in October 1994, a gang of some 20 Skinheads boarded a streetcar in Berlin and severely assaulted passengers they believed were foreigners. The following months, police in Hanau, near Frankfurt, broke up a Skinhead gang of 20 who were suspected of attacking goreigners, a handicapped person and a former synagogye. Seized by police in their raid on the gang were guns, ammunition and banned Nazi propaganda. Two of those arrested were suspected of manufacturing homemade bombs. The gang had links to banned neo-Nazi organizations including the Viking Youth.
According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Consitution (Bundesamt fuer Verfassungsschutz), the number of violent right-wing extremists in 1993 was about 5,600, many of them Skinheads. This was a decline from the 1992 estimate of of 6,400. In 1993, Skinheads also constituted a large proportion of those who perpetrated 2,232 acts of right-wing violence, including seven homocides and 20 attempted homocides. The comparable 1992 figures were 2,639 violent acts and 18 homocides. The numbers, while showing some improvement, are still shockingly high.
Anti-Jewish Crime
Most of the bigoted violence has been directed against foreigners, especially Turns, but Jews have increasingly become a favorite target. The number of criminal offenses motivated by proven or suspected anti-Semitism in 1994 was 881, an increase of 34 percent over the previous year's figures. Sixty-one of these were acts of violence. (In a separate tally, the German office on crime (BKA) estimated that there were 934 anti-Jewish incidents - 64 of them violent - during 1994.) Although there were 11 fewer anti-Jewish acts of violence in 1994 than in 1993, the total number of criminal acts against Jews in Germany has risen steadily over the past five years, from 208 in 1990 to 656 in 1993 and 881 in 1994. And the perpetrators tend to be young: Fifty-six percent of those suspected of committing violent acts of an extreme-right nature (including attacks against Jews, foreigners and political opponents) were under the age of 21.
The Skinhead lifestyle tends to revolve around gang activities. Criminal citations and jail terms are considered by many to be badges of honor and proofs of courage. Drunken sprees of random violence are routine. "Party until you drop" is the Skinhead jargon for the nightly drinking bouts which often end in the street as the Skins rove in packs looking for victims. "We stand totally drunk in our filth" runs the opening line of a popular Skinhead song by the Band Boehse Onkelz (Evil Uncles).[2] The song celebrates the numbed state of the participants who, even when arrested, continue their "manly" carousing in their cells.
"Doitsche Musik"
The single greatest influence on Skinheads is their music. It bonds them, voices their alienation, and glorifies them as defenders of German honor, while reviling foreigners, Jews, homosexuals, and the left. The lyrics of "Doitsche Musik" (a play on "Deutsche" and "oi") by the band Tonstoerung (Sound Disturbance) are graphic:
Sharpen your knife on the sidewalk,
let the knife slip into the Jew's body
Blood must flow
and we shit on the freedom of this Jew republic....
oiling the guillotine with the Jew's far.
Until a recent government crackdown, much of the music had an openly Nazi hue, raising up the image of a new storm trooper as the political soldier of the white race. Stoerkraft (Disturbing Force), one of the most influential of these bands before abandoning neo-Nazism, had applauded the Skinheads as the hard and merciless exemplars of the racial elite:
He's a Skinhead and a fascist
He has a bald head and is a racist
He has no moral and no heart
The features of his face are made of hatred
He loves war and he loves violence
And if you are his enemy, he will kill you.
Another band, Radikahl (word paly on "radical" and "bald"), recorded the song "Swastika," whose lyrics call for bestowing on Hitler the Nobel Prize. Volkszorn (People's Wrath) employs as a song title the slogan of Hitler's SA in their street battles, "Rotfront Verrecke" ("Smash the Red Front"). Other bands take their names directly from the National Socialist period: Werwolf, Sturmtrupp, Legion Condor (the German air unit that operated during the Spanish Civil War) and Kraft Durch Froide (an "oi" play on Strength Through Joy - the slogan of the Nazi labor service). At rock concerts, Skinhead crowds whipped into a frenzy often erupt into delirious shouts of "Seig Heil."
Racist Records
At present, more than 50 Skinhead bands are known to exist in Germany, as well as any number of smaller, amateur groups. Reflecting its subculture status, however, Skinhead music is largely an underground phenomenon. Record and cassette production and sales have mainly been handled through private fimrs such as Rock-O-Rama, located near Cologne; Skull Records in Bad Ueberkingen, Baden-Wuerttemberg; and Rebelles Europeens in Brest, France. In February 1993, Rock-O-Rama, the largest producer of such recordings, was raided by German police who confiscated about 30,000 CD's, tapes and records. The firm has since been cautious about the materials it handles.
Skinhead concerts are advertised through word of mouth and their locations revealed selectively, in part to prevent disruption by the left or banning by the police.[3] These concerts cometimes conclude in a rampage, as the Skinheads, flushed with alcohol, run wild. Following one such event in Cottbus, where 600 Skinheads listened to Stoerkraft, Radikahl, and the visiting British band Skrewdriver, a mini-riot ensured. Drunken revelers spilling out of an open air concert in Massen in October 1992, trashed the stores in the area and assaulted a bus load of Polish tourists. In August 1993, police banned a scheduled concert in Pritzerbe, confiscating a veritable arsenal of weapons from angry Skinheads who had gathered to party and afterwards "flatten a Turk." Shortly before that, some 700 to 900 persons attended a concert in Prieros, Brandenburg, where they heard the German bands Frontal, Brutale Haie, Elbstrum, and the British band Close Shave. In July 1994, still another such concert was attended by 900 right-wing extremists in Rudersdorf, near Berlin.
Until 1989, the "Fascho bands," as they are sometimes called, were confined to West Germany. After the collapse of the repressive Communist regime, a number of east German bands made their appearance. The first major concert was held in Nordhausen in 1990 under the auspices of Torsten Heise of the neo-Nazi group, the Free German Workers Party (FAP).[4] A year later, fuel was added to the fire when the British band Skrewdriver toured the area encouraging the formation of local bands. One of the first organized was Volkszorn (People's Wrath) in the town of Bruchsal, Baden-Wuerttemberg. Their tape, "Blood and Honor," which likened the Skinheads to the brown shirts, was an instant hit.
Among the most influential Skin bands presently active are: Brutale Haie ("Brutal Sharks" - from Erfurt, Thuringia); Blut und Ehre ("Blood and Honor" - Ludwigsburg, Baden-Wuerttemberg); Endstufe ("Final Stage" - Bremen), Triebtaeter ("Rapist" - Mutlangen); Oithanasie (word play on "oi" and "euthanasia" - Gera, Thuringia); Legion Condor (Radevormwald, North Rhine-Westphalia), Landser (East Berlin), Sturmtrupp (Neuberg, Bavaria), Noie Werte (Stuttgart). The bands from the new German states are noted for their particularly brutal, racist and xenophobic songs.
Skinzines
There are at least 60 skinzines in circulation, the majority printed in western Germany. Under names like _Panzerfaust_ (a WWII anti-tank weapon), _Shock Troops_ and _White Storm_, they offer interviews with Skinhead bands, lists of favorite recordings, song lyrics, poems and cartoons. Inflammatory accounts of street battles and firebombings are printed with the admonition: "The good deeds must go on." A poem, "Hitler's House," published in the Coburg zine _Clockwork Orange_, ends with the words: "Some day the world will realize that Adolf Hitler was right."
Other neo-Nazi skinzines are _Agressive_, _Der Patriot_, _Der Skinhead_, _Der Sturm_ (Storm), _Endsieg_ (Final Victory), _Eisenschadel_ (Iron Skull), _Erwache_ (Wake Up), _Glorreiche Taten_ (Glorious Deeds), _Hass und Gewalt (Hatred and Force), _Heimafront_ (Home Front), _Kahlschlag_ (Skin-Blow), _Macht und Ehre_ (Might and Honor), _Nahkampf_ (Close Combat), _Nordwind_ (North Wind), _Proiszens Gloria_ (Prussian Glory, misspelled to play on "oi"), _Querschlaeger_ (Ricochet), _Schlachtruf_ (Battle Cry), _Unterm Kroiz_ (Under the Cross, with a play on "oi"), _White Power_, and _Zeitbombe_ (Time Bomb). Also popular in German Skinhead circles is the Swedish publication _Storm_, a virulently anti-Semitic skinzine.
Flux
The zine situation - like the Skin scene in general - is somewhat in flux, a consequence of a crackdown on 12 of them in six states in July 1993. Among staffers taken into custody were Markus Dierchen of _Proiszens Gloria_, Berlin; Carsten Szczepanski of _United Skins_, Brandenburg; Andre Sacher and Angelika Teppich of _Angriff Uslar_, Lower Saxony; Silvia Berish of _Midgard_, Lower Saxony; Harals Mehr of _Donner Verstand_, North Rhine-Westphalia; Ilias Zaprasis of _Anhalt Attacke_, Saxony-Anhalt; and Marco Callies of _Schlagstock_, Schleswig-Holstein.
Ironically, one of the strongest influences on the German Skinhead scene is the American racist movement. English phrases like "White Power" and "White Aryan Resistance" (WAR) are a part of the German Skins' vocabulary. The Confederate flag and Ku Klux Klan imagery are also popular, although attempts to organize the Klan in Germany have met with a feeble response. The most influential American source of hate literature is Gary Lauck's Nebraska-bvased NSDAP-AO (National Socialist German Workers Party - Overseas Organization). Particularly popular among Skinheads are his swastika stickers with racist anti-foreigner slogans. British bands and zines are also influential among the German skins.
Revisionist pamphlets denouncing the Holocaust as a fraud are eagerly read by Skinheads. Two such tracts are "The Leuchter Report," distributed by Ernst Zuendel from Canada, and "The Auschwitz Myth," by Wilhelm Staeglich, which claims the Nazi death camps were a Zionist invention.
Anti-Semitism is a staple item in Skinhead circles, with attacks mainly centered on Jewish cemetaries and memorial sites. There has also been an increase in assaults on synagogues. On September 21, 1992, three Skinheads and a known neo-Nazi, Thomas Dienel, carried two halves of a pig's head into the synagogue in Erfurt, along with a death-threatening letter. (Dienel, head of the 600-member German National Party (DNP), was arrested and sentenced to two years and eight months imprisonment.) In March 1994 and May 1995, the aforementioned arsons of a synagogue in Luebeck took place.
Links with Other Neo-Nazis
As early as 1982, one of the first skinzines to appear in Berlin, _Attack_, undertook "as a sacred duty" to convert the Skinhead scene into a disciplined, ideological movement. "The political consciousness of the Skinhead ranges from extremism to anarchy," the magazine noted, "but for most, the only thing is to have a good time." This attitude stymied recruitment by the established neo-Nazi organizations and extremist parties. Despite repeated efforts to attract the Skinheads to their ranks, results were meager at first. The Free German Workers Party (FAP) financed one skinzine, _Querschlaeger_, and exerted strong influence on another, _White Power_, which first appeared in November 1990. _Clockwork Orange_, one of the most popular skinzines, was published by Ulrich Grossman of Coburg, who, from the mid-eighties on, was a member of the German National Democratic Party (NPD). _Endsieg_ (Final Victory) boosted the neo-Nazi brawlers of the now-banned Nationalist Front (NF), as did the magazine _The New Day_, which printed the "action program" of the NF in one issue. Another example is the case of the neo-Nazi Dieter Riefling, whose zine _The Activist_ promoted the FAP and the Relief Agency for National Political Prisoners and their Dependents (HNG).
The one-time manager of the band Volkszorn, Andreas Gaengel, was active in the Nationalist Front, and until June 1992 disseminated the zine _Endsieg_. A local Skin band, the Groilmeiers, has been composed of FAP members. According to _Informationsdienst_ (a monthly intelligence newsletter on terrorism, extremism and organized crime), the former drummer for the Kraft Durch Froide band, Andreas Sigfried Pohl, was chief of the organizing department of the NF, and was active behind the scenes in the neo-Nazi Society for the Advancement of Middle German Youth (FMJ), which was banned in 1993. In Autumn 1993 the group renamed itself Direkte Aktion/Mitteldeutschland. Its publication _Der Angriff_ (Attack), whose title is taken from the newspaper of Hitler's chief propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, has since 1993 stood out for its advocacy of aggressive xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and violence. "Nobody can tell us," said _Der Angriff's_ issue no. 5 (Winter 1994), "that he was not pleased when things started in Rostock" (referring to the burning down of a refugee hostel in August 1992). The same issue denounced reformed Skin bands, such as Stoerkraft, which distanced itself from xenophobic killings with its song "Arson Murderers - you don't belong to us." _Der Angriff's_ preference is the aforementioned band Brutaile Haie, which it calls "honest." Direkte Aktion is oriented toward the recruitment of unemployed and disoriented youth in the new German states. In January 1994 the police conducted pre-dawn raids on the group's hangouts in five states, and Brandeburg authorities banned the organization in May 1995.
The more established right-wing parties are of less interest to the Skinheads. Franz Schoenhuber's party, Die Republikaner, offically discourages Skinhead participation. (How the Skins cast their secret ballots at election time is, of course, another matter.) Gerhard Frey's German Peoples Union (DVU), and the German National Democratic Party (NPD), while stoking the fire with their nationalist and anti-foreigner rhetoric, publicly keep their distance. Their public posture notwithstanding, one of the individuals charged in the murderous anti-foreign arson in Solingen has been identified in press accounts as having been a member of the DVU. In Muelheim, North Rhine-Westphalia, a 56-year-old Turk died of a heart attack after having been assaulted on March 9, 1993, by two 21-year-old Skinhead types. The two, both of whom had criminal records and were members of the Republikaner Party, first verbally insulted the victim with the epithet "Shit-Turk" and similar phrases. They then pushed him to the ground, and one of them pointed a gas pistol at the victim's head and pulled the trigger three times. Although the pistol mis-fired, the victim was so frightened that his heart collapsed. The assailants got four years in prison, and the Republikaner Party says it expelled them. There have also been cases of NPD members participating in xenophobic crims like arson against the homes of foreigners.
Unity and Struggle
These cases, however, remain the exception so far. For one thing, tactical reasons discourage the election-oriented parties from favoring direct affiliation with Skinheads; for another, most Skins have a distaste for these parties which they see as part of "the system." Yet the situation remains somewhat fluid. An example is the youth organization of the NPD, the Junge Nationaldemokraten (JN), which has around 150 activists. This group has lately adopted a militant approach, and disregarded official NPD policy prohibiting contacts with neo-Nazi groups. Last year _Einheit und Kampf_ (Unity and Struggle), the organ of the JN, published an interview with Andreas Siegfried Pohl, a former member of a Skin band, who was an official of the banned Nationalist Front. In the interview Pohl called for a "youth" and "youth-style" (read: "Skinhead") role in "redeveoping a national APO," or extra-parliamentary opposition, a codeword suggesting street fighters. The January 1994 issue of _Einheit und Kampf_ advertised concerts featuring the aforementioned hard-line Skin bands Brutale Haie, Frontal, Trietaeter, and Noie Werte, organized "in cooperation with" the JN. Another ad in the paper sought a new producer for the Brutale Haie band.
There is also evidence that convicted Skinheads are receiving a thorough indoctrination in neo-Nazi ideology at "comradeship evenings" held in prison. Particularly active on this front is the aforementioned Relief Agency for National Political Prisoners and their Dependents, a right-wing group that sends a steady stream of propaganda to incarcerated neo-Nazi radicals and Skinheads.
Germany's Skinheads have also developed a growing network of contacts with Skinheads in other European countries, notably England, France, Holland, Sweden, Austria, Hungary and, to some degree, Poland.
Eastern Factor
The collapse of the Communist regime in East Germany significantly affected the Skinhead situation. The emergence of the eastern Skins radicalized the Skinhead scene in both numbers and militancy. The aforementioned annual reports of the German intelligence services placed the total number of militant right-wing extremists (the majority of them Skinheads) at 6,400 in 1992 (2,600 in the west, 3,800 in the new eastern states) and 5,600 in 1993 (3,000 in the west and 2,600 in the east). Taking population figures into account, these estimates show a disproportionately high Skinhead presence in the new states.
Among the principal beneficiares of the radicalization was the FAP, with a spillover membership in Michael Swierczek's National Offensive, Frank Huebner's German Alternative, Christian Worch's National List, and the Nationalist Front; all have subsequently been banned. The latter four were youth-oriented groups that emphasized street marches and "direct action." The Hamburg-based National List was banned by Hamburg authorities, and the others by federal officials.
Another group recently outlawed was the Viking Youth, a neo-Nazi organization with about 400 young members. Members of the organization have in recent years associated with the Skinheads. Federal Interior Minister Manfred Kanther announced the ban in early November 1994, saying there was no place in Germany for "groups like the Viking Youth that propagate racism and anti-Semitism and teach youths to be violent, intolerant and to hate democracy."
While slow at first to counter the neo-Nazi menace of recent years, the German government has since demonstrated increasing vigor in dealing with the problem. Utilizing the tools available to it under the postware German Constitution, it has banned some neo-Nazi groups, confiscated their propaganda materials and arrested many (including Skinheads) who have broken the law. The controversial constitutional change adoped in 1993, limiting the flow of refugees into the country, has moderated the anti-foreigner fever that earlier gripped the land. The consequence has been a gradual decline in the strength and rate of crime of Skinheads and other right-wing extremists. At the same time, the far-right political parties - the Republikaners and the DVU - have fared poorly in the recent federal elections.
A Real Threat
These positive trends notwithstanding, the extremist threat to German democracy has not gone away. Particularly disturbing are the rising numbers of anti-Semitic crimes, a trend which seems to indicate that Jews, as distinct from other "foreigners," are coming to be regarded by some German right-extremists as the "main enemy." Furthermore, segments of the neo-Nazi movement in Germany are believed to be accumulating weapons and going underground. Sources report that internal neo-Nazi discussions revolve around the idea of "armed resistance."
Finally, the earlier profile of the German Skinhead as poorly educated, unemployed, and the product of a broken home must, in the light of later research, be revised. Police statistics now reveal a different - and more disturbing - picture. An evaluation (1991-1993) of almost 500 militant right-wing extremists (particularly Skinheads) arrested for violent actions showed 33.6% pupils, students and apprentices; 28.7% skilled workers and craftsmen; 11.3% unskilled workers; 5.6% office workers; 7.9% soldiers - and only 11.3% unemployed. Thus, these violent extremists have been coming in substantial measure from the middle ranges of society, not just the "lumpen" fringe. (Anti-Defamation League, 34-44)
Notes: 1. Around the time of Moelln, large numbers of Germans took to the streets to express outrage at the neo-Nazi violence. In Berlin, a government-backed rally drew 300,000 anti-Nazi protesters, while additional candlelight vigils and protest marches attracted large numbers of Berliners. There followed demonstrations of 400,000 in Munich, 120,000 each in Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, 400,000 in Hamburg, 250,000 in Essen and 200,000 once again in Berlin. It is estimated that a total of some three million Germans took part in these anti-Nazi expressions.
2. Boehse Onkelz have since shed their affinity with neo-Nazisim.
3. Most recently, police stopped 231 Skins who were on their way to a concert planned for March 25, 1995, in Triptis (near Erfurt in eastern Germany), and prevented the event from taking place.
4. The FAP was banned in February 1995.
Work Cited
Anti-Defamation League. The Skinhead International: A Worldwide Survey of Neo-Nazi Skinheads. New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1995. Anti-Defamation League, 823 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017. -- The Nizkor Project: An Electronic Holocaust Educational Resource Anonymous ftp: ftp.almanac.bc.ca Nizkor Web: http://www.almanac.bc.ca/ (Under construction - permanently!) Kenneth McVay OBC. Home Page: http://www.almanac.bc.ca/~kmcvay/