Murder by Skinheads Sparks Fear in Poland : Neo-Nazis: Eight youths attack and kill a German truck driver. Although the country was one of the chief victims of Nazism in World War II, these young people see nothing strange about violence and intimidation.

On streets where Solidarity demonstrators once reigned, a new underground movement is on the prowl--ugly, angry and terrifying.

On Oct. 1, police say, eight skinheads descended on a German truck driver outside a Nowa Huta restaurant and beat him to death.

Now there is real fear among the community’s 220,000 residents and worry about how to combat the violence.

“Solidarity” has replaced “Lenin” as the name of the main street in this gritty smokestack district. But little has improved for youths since the country cast off Communist rule in 1989.

The young have been set adrift in a changing Poland.

The strong arm of Communism kept a lid on restless young people for more than a generation. In Nowa Huta, that meant few prospects beyond a steel mill job and a decade to wait for a cramped apartment of one’s own.

Then came the new freedoms, and with them new frustrations.

For some young people, limited opportunities bred boredom, discontent and anger. They shaved their heads and began mimicking those vaguely political hooligans of the West known as skinheads.

Although Poland was one of the chief victims of Nazism in World War II, the youths see nothing strange about embracing neo-Nazism, violence and intimidation. They wear leather and heavy boots, sometimes even Nazi symbols.

“Those youngsters now can feel more freedom and they do whatever they like, “ said Henryk Kaleta, a taxi driver who has stopped working at night.

The eight arrested for the ambush of the German driver, whose companion was badly beaten, told police they were avenging attacks on Poles in Germany.

But the political motive seemed to be an afterthought, Police Supt. Jozef Gawlik said. That the drivers were German was “just a coincidence,” he said, because earlier that day they had beaten two students.

“They got drunk and they just went crazy,” speculated Mateusz Wrobel, an 18-year-old who himself became a skinhead three years ago.

Wrobel said many of his contemporaries feel lost. They latch onto subculture groups like the skinheads or the anarchists because “each offers them some kind of answer.” Some are attracted by right-wing nationalist parties, others just want to fight.

Nowa Huta was built in the 1950s on the outskirts of the renaissance city of Krakow as a model socialist community, its centerpiece the huge Lenin steel works. Peasants attracted by relatively well-paid jobs migrated to the new city, but many keep their rough village ways.

Many men, leaving families behind, lived in dismal worker dormitories where the recreation was alcohol and fighting. Uprooted after generations on the land, many found the anonymous ranks of apartment blocks alienating.

With democracy and capitalism came new threats. The steel mill is on the verge of bankruptcy and unemployment is soaring.

“There have always been a lot of hooligans in Nowa Huta, but I never feared to walk home after closing the restaurant late at night,” said a 65-year-old retired waiter named Piotr. “Now it is very dangerous.”

The driver’s murder caused outrage. Many residents laid flowers and lit candles at the site on Solidarity Avenue, which like most of the district’s streets is virtually empty of pedestrians by early evening, save for a few drunks making laborious efforts to find their way home.

“He was an innocent working man and they killed him without a reason,” said Janina Zwierzynska, a 60-year-old retiree who brought a bouquet. She said she thought too many young people “do not know what they really want.”

She recalled her first encounter with skinheads during a noisy demonstration several months ago: “I asked them what they represented. They told me: ‘Freedom’!”

Elzbieta Boron, 40, said many parents, trying to make ends meet, have no time for their children.

“Besides, everything is so expensive and they cannot afford to go to a movie or invite a girl to a disco,” she said.

One of the few efforts to help came from a local theater director, Jerzy Fedorowicz, who talked with skinheads and punks, rival nihilistic groups who were repeatedly breaking bus windows in town.

Fedorowicz made a deal: for a promise that the area near the Ludowy Theater would remain a “quiet zone,” he would direct an amateur performance of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

The cast is skinheads and punks, ages 14 to 20. The show has heavy metal music, skinheads in black leather jackets and startling haircuts for the punks. After a year, it is still a hit among young people, who even fill the theater for rehearsals.

“It allows people to show what they are really like,” said Wrobel, one of the leading players.

Making a mark seems to have been the goal of the skinheads arrested for the truck driver attack too. Prosecutor Eugeniusz Wolnik said they relish the attention their crime received on television and in newspapers, and have shown no remorse.