Germany Challenged by Old Hatreds : Xenophobia: The issue of racist violence is expected to dominate debate when Parliament reconvenes Monday.

Against a backdrop of nightly firebombings and neo-Nazis hurling stones at foreigners, a skittish Germany is locked in a battle with its own past as it struggles to cope politically, psychologically and physically with an ever-swelling tide of foreign asylum-seekers.

For the past two weeks, the formerly Communist eastern part of the country has been rocked by a wave of racist violence by mostly young right-wing extremists who, authorities say, are becoming bolder, more brutal and--on the surface, at least--more popular.

When the Bundestag, or lower house of Parliament, returns from summer recess Monday, the issue is expected to dominate debate as Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s center-right coalition seeks to tighten the country’s liberal asylum laws.

“If it goes any further, if the politicians don’t change things, then Germany could repeat its history,” warned a spokesman for the radical-right Free German Workers’ Party, who declined to give his name in a telephone interview.

Police reported right-wing attacks on refugee centers before dawn Friday in Eisenhuettenstadt in east Germany, in Luebben, about 75 miles southeast of Berlin, in Biesenthal outside the eastern part of the capital and in the western city of Leverkusen, where ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union are housed.

Eisenhuettenstadt saw the worst of the violence. About 200 police and border guards fought for two hours with 60 rock-throwing extremists who tried to storm a refugee center that had been attacked a week before.

Five police cars were wrecked and one police officer suffered a leg injury. Four radicals were arrested.

Pressure to quell the spate of attacks against refugee hostels grew on Friday after both the United States and Russia expressed their concerns over the violence spreading through Germany. Police, but no foreigners, have been injured in the recent incidents.

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement in Moscow saying it was “following with concern the growth of nationalistic and right-wing extremist feelings in Germany . . . accompanied by pogroms and violent actions against foreigners.”

Rightists firebombed a camp for ethnic German refugees from the former Soviet Union on Thursday night in Cologne, but the flames were quickly doused and no injuries were reported.

The Russian Foreign Ministry urged that “German authorities . . . take appropriate measures to curb such unseemly actions and that the rights and safety of citizens, including foreigners, . . . be duly protected.”

The U.S. State Department issued a statement Thursday, saying “apprehensions about this phenomenon” had been raised “repeatedly in meetings with German officials.”

The opposition Social Democrats, having recently abandoned their strict stance against any limits to the asylum law, called Friday for Kohl to hold a crisis meeting on racism with key politicians, church and community leaders.

Kohl’s own Christian Democrats called the attacks on foreigners a disgrace to Germany.

“We demand that the full force of the law is used against anyone who endangers the lives of people, sets houses on fire or incites hatred against foreigners,” the Christian Democratic Union said in a statement Friday after a policy meeting.

Civil servants charged with processing the refugees also demanded action and criticized police for moving too slowly.

Germany’s equivalent of the FBI also put part of the blame on the police, who came under heavy criticism for ignoring warnings of violence in the Baltic port of Rostock and responding too slowly when trouble erupted.

Police in the formerly Communist east are too “uncertain” and “inexperienced” to deal with the racist violence, said Hans-Gert Lange, spokesman for the Office for Constitutional Protection in Cologne.

“I believe in western Germany that the police would react differently,” Lange told The Times in a telephone interview Friday.

He said that 818 acts of violence by right-wing extremists were recorded nationwide during the first eight months of this year. Nine people have been killed, including German derelicts.

Lange said that 30% of the attacks involved arson or explosives, signaling a “considerable rise in brutality. The right-extremists and skinheads are clearly more brutal than before.”

More violence was expected over the weekend, but even if asylum laws are tightened, Lange warned, the hatred will remain.

A record 274,000 would-be refugees already have poured into Germany this year from Eastern Europe, the Third World and the former Soviet Union, and the number is expected to swell to half a million by the New Year.

The union representing lawyers and judges reported Friday that there already is a backlog of more than 300,000 applications and that more personnel and office equipment are needed to cope with the ever-growing mountain of paper.

A severe housing crunch in Germany, particularly in the decayed east, has forced thousands of asylum-seekers to live in tent cities, campers, military barracks and even aboard ships while waiting for their cases to be considered, a process that can take years.

Officials estimate that about 90% of the applicants do not qualify as refugees, who by definition must be fleeing persecution in their homeland.

With rising unemployment in the east and the spiraling costs of German unification already stirring public discontent, resentment over the financial burden of these so-called fake refugees runs high. The Finance Ministry estimates that Germany spent about $3.9 billion to shelter refugees last year.

The mood reached a crisis point two weeks ago in Rostock, where about 200 Romanian Gypsies had been camping all summer outside an overburdened refugee processing center in a residential neighborhood of drab, Communist-era high-rise apartments.

German neighbors in the complex say they complained repeatedly, to no avail, about unsanitary conditions and petty crime.

Gangs of neo-Nazis, skinheads and other right-wing extremists drew cheers from German residents when they laid siege to the Gypsy camp, forcing local authorities to relocate the foreigners.

Afterward, unabashed residents defended their actions by noting that the young thugs had accomplished in one night what the politicians had failed to do all summer.

“The tolerance of right-extremists by the population was unlike anything we’ve seen yet,” the Free German Workers’ Party spokesman said. “We’re talking thousands of people supporting the violence.”

At the Office for Constitutional Protection, spokesman Lange basically agreed.

“Frustration is high in the eastern states with economic and social problems, joblessness and the housing shortage,” he said.

“Since Rostock, the right-extremists feel strongly encouraged,” Lange said. “They are strongly motivated.”

Times staff writer Elizabeth Shogren, in Moscow, contributed to this report.