Germans Allegedly Paid to Have Hostel Torched : Extremism: Account of arson directed at foreigners appears in Berlin paper. An investigation is ordered.

A state government Tuesday ordered an urgent investigation into reports that residents of a small community near Berlin paid right-wing extremists to burn down a youth hostel refurbished to house asylum-seekers.

Although the accusations remain unproven, this macabre twist to the problem of attacks against foreigners has sent a shiver through German officialdom.

“This case has the highest priority,” said Hans-Otto Braeutigam, justice minister for the eastern state of Brandenburg. “I’ve asked the public prosecutor to pursue it with all due haste. If these charges can be proved, it would be an extremely serious matter.”

What is certain is that the newly renovated hostel in the picturesque village of Dolgenbrodt, 25 miles southeast of central Berlin, was firebombed last Nov. 1 before 86 foreign asylum-seekers were scheduled to move in. Police said the attack was arson.

Last May, police arrested a 19-year-old extremist in connection with the attack, but he was released for lack of evidence and the case seemed to run out of steam.

The investigation exploded to life again Tuesday with the appearance of a detailed expose printed in Berlin’s alternative newspaper, the Tageszeitung.

During the first half of 1993, more than 700 incidents of racist violence were recorded in Germany. The continuing stream of foreign asylum-seekers, coupled with the country’s deep recession, has intensified social tensions, making arson attacks against homes or small businesses linked to foreigners a part of everyday life.

Between last May, when five Turkish nationals were killed in the western city of Solingen, and mid-July, there were 28 similar arson attacks against foreigners reported nationwide. Most were carried out by disaffected youths claiming adherence to Nazi ideas.

However, there is no known case in which residents of a community have paid for someone to engage in such violence.

“This is a unique case,” said Braeutigam.

The Tageszeitung claimed that a sizable number of Dolgenbrodt’s 260 residents met twice at a local inn to discuss how to keep the foreigners out.

At the second meeting, three days before the fire, it became clear to residents that they had little chance of blocking the arrival, the Tageszeitung reported.

The story referred to two separate sources who claimed that villagers collected the equivalent of about $1,200, then paid right-wing extremists to torch the hostel.

One source from a neighboring village, identified only as a 58-year-old man, said a Dolgenbrodt resident described the money collection during a long drinking session shortly after the attack.

The second source, the 19-year-old extremist arrested in connection with the incident, reportedly denied involvement but told police that he knew from neo-Nazi friends that financial and logistic support for the attack had come from the community.

Braeutigam on Tuesday confirmed this part of the paper’s account, stating that the youth had told investigators “that the action was backed by money from the village.” He said the comment had not been followed up after the suspect’s release.

Dolgenbrodt’s mayor, Ute Preissler, admitted that residents were certainly “not very sad that this (the fire) solved the problem,” but she denied that anyone had been paid to carry out the attack.

The attack and the description of the mood in the village at the time underscore the fact that anti-foreigner sentiments in Germany have tended to be strongest in tidy, middle-class neighborhoods of small, affluent communities.

Last November, three Turkish nationals died when arson swept their home in the well-heeled northern town of Moelln. Six months later, five other Turks were killed in a carbon-copy arson attack in the western city of Solingen.