German neo-Nazis attack Jewish memorial

BERLIN, Nov 10 (Reuters) German neo-Nazis, some shouting ''Sieg Heil'', rampaged in the eastern city of Frankfurt on Oder and destroyed wreaths placed to mark the anniversary of the 1938 Nazi pogrom against the Jews, police said today.

A police spokeswoman said the group had launched an attack last evening, shortly after a memorial service by community and Jewish leaders at a monument where a synagogue once stood.

She said the neo-Nazis trampled floral wreaths placed at a memorial stone to the synagogue in the Polish border city that was destroyed 68 years ago in the Nazis' Kristallnacht or ''Night of Broken Glass''.

They threw away candles left at the memorial, which had been attended by about 200 people. When police arrived, some of the neo-Nazis shouted ''Sieg Heil'', police said. Authorities stayed on guard at the memorial site through the night.

''We are still investigating but at this stage I can say we will at a minimum be raising charges of using illegal symbols,'' state prosecutor Michael Neff told Reuters.

A total of 16 people, aged 16-24, were detained after the attack, police said.

Frankfurt on Oder is on the opposite side of the country's financial capital in Frankfurt on the Main river. There are about 200 Jews living in Frankfurt, a city of 63,000. There were about 800 in 1933.

ANTI-SEMITISM Earlier yesterday, President Horst Koehler, in a speech broadcast on national television at the consecration of a new synagogue in Munich, warned anti-Semitism was still present.

The Munich synagogue is near the building where Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels delivered the speech that paved the way for the November 9-10, 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom.

Roused by the speech, mobs destroyed hundreds of synagogues across Germany and Austria, ransacked Jewish homes and stores and attacked Jews, in some cases beating them to death.

Germany marks Kristallnacht in solemn ceremonies each year.

Germany's eastern states, plagued with high unemployment, have been a hotbed of Germany's far-right movement. Extremists there have defied police efforts to thwart the violence.'' Frankfurt, 80 km east of Berlin on the Oder river, is in Brandenburg, one of three ex-communist states where far-right parties have won more than five per cent of the state vote and hold seats in the state assemblies.

The federal government has called a rise in anti-Semitic violence worrying.

Germany's BKA federal police released figures last month showing attacks by far-right groups rose 20 per cent to 8,000 in the first eight months of 2006 compared to the same 2005 period.

In July, far-rightists in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt burned the diary of Holocaust victim Anne Frank, causing outrage among German politicians and anti-racist groups.

In another incident last month, teenagers in the same state forced a 16-year-old classmate to parade round school wearing a sign with an anti-Semitic Nazi-era slogan.

REUTERS SP VV1614