Neo-Nazis Converge on Town for Hess Burial

About 200 neo-Nazis have converged on this tranquil northern Bavarian town for the burial of Rudolf Hess, the former deputy to Adolf Hitler, and more were on the way, police said Sunday.

Paramilitary border guards manned around-the-clock roadblocks around Wunsiedel, a town set in rolling hills close to the Czechoslovak frontier. Police helicopters circled overhead.

In the last two days, 88 neo-Nazis and others have been detained in the area. One man, who wore a black mask when neo-Nazis stormed into the town’s cemetery giving Hitler salutes and shouting “Revenge for Hess!,” will be kept in jail, police said.

Judicial authorities on Saturday banned all open-air meetings in and near Wunsiedel connected in any way with Hess.

According to an official autopsy report, the 93-year-old Hess died of strangulation in an apparent suicide last Monday in West Berlin after 46 years in Allied custody. His body is being kept at a secret location until the burial, which is expected to take place Wednesday.

The delay in burying the last remaining Nazi leader was caused by the insistence of his son, Wolf-Ruediger, on a second autopsy. He has said he doubts statements by the four wartime Allies that Hess committed suicide.

Neo-Nazis and other far-right groups have seized on the doubts of Hess’ son and family lawyer Alfred Seidl and are claiming that Hess was murdered in Spandau prison.

Gerhard Boeden, head of the internal security service, said on television Saturday night that his office expects a rash of neo-Nazi terror attacks and is taking strict precautions.

Several hundred police and border guards, including reinforcements from distant cities, are on constant patrol through the northern Bavarian district. A spokesman declined to say exactly how many men were deployed.

“We have to see to it that there are no disturbances before or during the funeral,” he said.

The spokesman said groups of neo-Nazis from The Netherlands and Britain were reported to be on their way to Bavaria.

The picturesque cemetery was closed to everyone except local residents seeking to tend the flowering plants that adorn almost every grave.

Hess had been held in Spandau by Britain, the United States, France and the Soviet Union since 1946, when he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the war crimes trials at Nuremberg.

He was captured in 1941 when he parachuted into Scotland on an apparent mission to seek a separate peace between Germany and Britain.