14 Hurt in Germany in Brawling Over WWII Exhibit

Scuffles between German leftists and rightists Saturday at an exhibition on Hitler’s military injured at least 14 people, including three police officers.

About 150 young rightists showed up to demonstrate against the exhibit, titled “War of Extermination: Crimes of the Wehrmacht From 1941 to 1944,” and 2,500 anti-rightists held a counterdemonstration, police said. The opposing sides clashed on several occasions, police said.

About 150 leftists threw stones at the rightists and police, said Hans-Dieter Klosa, Hanover police chief.

Police used nightsticks to break up the clashes. At least 11 protesters and three officers received minor injuries, police said. About 150 demonstrators were arrested, and most were released after identity checks.

Klosa had banned the rightist demonstration, fearing violence. But the National Democratic Party of Germany appealed the ban, and a court overturned it Friday.

The exhibit, which has been traveling to cities in Germany and Austria over the past three years, uses photographs and documents to show that ordinary German soldiers killed Jews and other civilians under Hitler’s rule.

Many older Germans still view the Wehrmacht as an honorable force that fought for the homeland. Thousands of neo-Nazis demonstrated against the traveling exhibit in March 1997 during its Munich installation. However, it has often been displayed without incident.

Meanwhile, the German government wants a final decision on plans for a central Holocaust memorial in Berlin by mid-1999, the senior official for cultural affairs, Michael Naumann, said in an interview published Saturday.