Anti-Nazis protest in Germany

Germans were protesting against marches like this one of neo-Nazis

COTTBUS, Germany -- About 10,000 opponents of far-right violence have demonstrated in the east German border town of Cottbus after a series of racist and anti-Semitic incidents.

Police said Sunday's demonstration near the former site of the town's synagogue, which was joined by Brandenburg state premier Manfred Stolpe and other civic leaders, passed off peacefully.

"This protest shows that people refuse to be cowed by 60 or 70 Nazi thugs," Stolpe said at the protest.

MESSAGE BOARD Germany today

"They won't allow anyone to trample on human dignity. But what we have to do is get this message across in everyday life," the Social Democrat added.

Last week, a group of four neo-Nazi youths shouting racist slogans attacked several people, among them a man from Lebanon and another from Ukraine.

The youths have been held pending charges.

On New Year's day, another group of male youths shouted death threats outside the home of an elderly Jewish man and his wife in the town on the Polish border.

The police are still searching for them.

The man, once a slave labourer for the Nazis, was offered protective custody by a police officer who, however, caused deep offence.

He used the expression "Schutzhaft" -- a euphemism dating back to the Third Reich which meant arbitrary arrest and deportation to concentration camps for countless Jews.

Struggling last year against a surge of increasingly violent neo-Nazi incidents, Germany has instituted a raft of measures from public awareness campaigns to calls for tougher sentencing and a nationwide hotline to report extreme-right activity.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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German Government

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