Ugly Reminders

It takes only a few delinquents with paintbrushes to create a series of anti-Semitic incidents. What matters, particularly in Germany these days, is how the rest of their countrymen feel about it.

Of the half million Jews who lived in Germany before the Nazis opened up concentration camps and crematoriums, a mere 30,000 remain among the 53 million West Germans today. They have no major influence in commerce or industry, are widely scattered and generally of advanced age.

On Christmas Eve in Cologne, hoodlums smeared swastikas and the words "Jews Out" on a new synagogue that Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had helped dedicate three months earlier. They daubed paint on a monument to Jewish victims of Hitler. This was just the beginning, but it quickly inspired imitators.* In the Hessian town of Seligenstadt, an 85-year-old Jew received a letter threatening him with crucifixion. Vandals scrawled "Death to the Jews" in red paint on park benches in Braunschweig, and in Rheydt the word "Swine" was scratched on a Jew's shopwindow. In the Ruhr, and to the north near Hamburg, swastikas and "Heil Hitlers" appeared on walls.

Two young rowdies, both members of the tiny neo-Nazi German Reich Party, admitted desecrating the Cologne synagogue. "All decent Germans join me in condemning this atrocious act," Chancel lor Adenauer wired Cologne Rabbi Zw Asaria. A week later, without offering up any proof, the government said it was a "planned action designed to discredit the Federal Republic in the eyes of the world" and hinted that not cranks or crackpots but Communists were responsible.

Newspapers spoke of the nation's "rage and shame" and demanded swift police action; the Minister of Interior hinted that he might ban the German Reich Party (whose former Nazi leaders professed innocence). But the Socialist Neue Rhein Zeitung of Cologne complained that "all these telegrams and expressions of regret . . . seem to be prompted by the concern over the Cologne disgrace abroad." In a radio speech, President Heinrich Lubke blamed all Germans for an "overestimation of material achievement as opposed to intellectual, spiritual and moral values," and noted the continued prevalence in Germany of "arrogance, self-satisfaction and feelings of superiority." Cologne's Rabbi ZwiAsaria did not think enough was being done. Said he: "All those who held high positions under the Nazi regime and are still sitting in government offices should be ousted. German schoolteachers should tell their pupils what the Nazis did, instead of passing over the Hitler era in silence. We do not blame the whole German nation for acts committed by a few hoodlums, but we are worried about the future. Right now, Germany is well off, but what will happen when more difficult times come? They will again hold the Jews responsible."

* Including some in Vienna, Paris, London, Oslo, West Hartford, Conn, and Manhattan (where a black swastika was smeared across fashionable Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue).

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