15,000 Chant ‘Shame’ at Neo-Nazis

Chanting “Shame on you,” about 15,000 demonstrators marched Saturday through the eastern German neighborhood where residents last week cheered neo-Nazi thugs attacking foreign asylum-seekers.

Extremely heavy security and an evening rainstorm discouraged any major clashes between the mostly left-leaning young demonstrators and gangs of neo-Nazis and skinheads still prowling the Lichtenhagen complex of drab high-rise apartments in this Baltic seaport.

Convoys of border police with riot shields and batons brought all traffic on the autobahn to a halt outside city limits an hour before the demonstration to conduct car-by-car searches for Molotov cocktails, baseball bats and other makeshift weapons. Potatoes studded with nails were among the “truckload” of contraband seized, according to police spokesman Nils Wenzec.

Helicopters hovered overhead, water cannons stood ready, and thousands of riot police flanked the crowd during the three-hour march.

Wenzec said 80 people were arrested. No injuries were reported. “A few parked cars were set on fire, and there were small scuffles between different groups and police, but nothing serious,” Wenzec said. “There were no riots.”

News agencies reported disturbances and rallies in a dozen other cities and towns across Germany, including marches in Bonn and Marburg that were held, like the one here, to protest neo-Nazi violence.

At Cottbus, about 60 miles southeast of Berlin, several hundred right-wing extremists were driven off by police when they attacked a shelter for foreigners, according to agency reports.

The British new agency Reuters quoted Rostock police spokesman Gunnar Maechler as saying that foreign television crews paid German children to give the straight-armed “Hitler salute” during Saturday’s march. Maechler did not identify the crews.

German laws ban demonstrations of support for Nazism such as giving the Hitler salute or wearing swastikas.

Throughout the evening in Rostock, there were rumors of neo-Nazis moving toward shelters where Gypsies and Vietnamese laborers were moved after extremists rousted them from their hostel last week. But police said that there were no attacks against any of the shelters for foreigners in or around Rostock.

Few residents joined the march or subsequent rally, which was organized by a coalition of left-wing groups and trade organizations under the slogan “stop the pogrom.”

Among the marchers were hundreds of black-clad anarchists, with bandannas covering their faces to avoid identification by police filming the event.

The protest came a week after gangs of skinheads and neo-Nazis stormed an apartment complex where foreign asylum-seekers were housed. German neighbors cheered and applauded from their balconies as the rioters forced the evacuation of about 200 Romanian Gypsies who had been camped out front all summer while local officials sought shelter for them.

Local residents later said their response to the rioting was born not of racism but of frustration over the unsanitary conditions and petty crime within the Gypsy camp.

Germany is expected to absorb half a million asylum-seekers this year--double the record already set in 1991 and far more than any of its European neighbors.

Bonn is expected to debate constitutional amendments this fall that would tighten Germany’s liberal asylum laws and speed up processing, which now can take years.

The issue is particularly divisive in the country’s formerly Communist eastern states, where unemployment is high and the housing shortages are critical.

Dr. Carsten Mantel, a 38-year-old epidemiologist, brought his three young children on the 135-mile trip from Berlin to join Saturday’s demonstration.

“We just came from the States after living in Boston for two years, and when we heard about what happened here, we decided to come and show that there are other Germans as well, because, well, we do feel ashamed,” Mantel said.

His children, ages 7, 10 and 12, brought homemade signs urging people to “live together in peace.”

Their father ruefully admitted such pleas are unlikely to have much effect on the swaggering teen-agers who scream, “Sieg heil!” and rally around the motto, “Germany for Germans.”

“It’s just important to show the international community that there is a notion of history here,” Mantel said.

The marchers carried banners warning of a return to the Nazi era, and Mayor Klaus Kilimann appealed for peace in thousands of leaflets distributed throughout this city of 245,000.