War Crimes Photo Exhibit Sparks Brawl in Germany

Hundreds of neo-Nazis and left-wing protesters battled one another with stones and fists on a train in eastern Germany on Saturday, in a brawl connected with a traveling photo exhibit documenting war crimes committed by the German army during World War II.

Police said that eight people were hurt in the clash and that the train--full of unsuspecting passengers when it was beset by neo-Nazis throwing rocks--was damaged but able to keep rolling after about 100 officers were called in to break up the fight.

The controversial photo exhibition, which has been touring Germany for more than two years, has triggered protests before. The criticism often comes from elderly German veterans who argue that the Wehrmacht was, on the whole, a “clean” and “honorable” army and that the mass murders of Jews, Gypsies and other noncombatants on the Eastern Front during World War II were the work of Hitler’s fanatical SS forces.

Some of the biggest protests took place last March, when the photos arrived in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, Germany’s conservative heartland. Neo-Nazis staged one of their largest rallies ever, veterans charged that the photos were faked and even mainstream conservative politicians denounced the show.

After that, officials elsewhere in Germany debated whether to cancel the show’s stops in their cities. But it has kept traveling with notably few disturbances until its arrival in the stately old city of Dresden.

Saturday’s clash appears to have stemmed from recent calls issued by right-wing leaders urging their followers to converge on the city. One of the most resounding battle cries came from Manfred Roeder, an elderly neo-Nazi leader who was convicted in 1982 on terrorism charges for involvement in a firebombing that led to the deaths of two Vietnamese.

His latest rallying cry directed at neo-Nazis, along with the other appeals like it, attracted about 1,400 skinheads and other far-right demonstrators to Dresden on Saturday. Carrying iron cross banners and other German-nationalist paraphernalia, they rallied in front of the city’s ornate opera house, railing that the photo exhibition “defamed the honor of German soldiers.”

Their presence, in turn, attracted hundreds of left-wing counterdemonstrators to protest neo-Nazism and xenophobia in front of City Hall.

About 3,000 police were deployed in the city to keep the two groups apart. But the authorities couldn’t be everywhere, and about 60 neo-Nazis were able to stake out the train station in the nearby town of Wurzen and intercept the train from Leipzig as it made a stop, loaded with about 300 left-wing counterdemonstrators.

When the neo-Nazis began stoning the train, the driver tried to pull out of the station, police said, but someone pulled the emergency brake. The train stopped again, and the left-wing protesters jumped down and began battling the neo-Nazis on the tracks and in the passenger cars.

Dresden lies in the former East Germany, where government statisticians have recorded a recent increase in right-wing violence.

Unemployment in eastern Germany is also significantly higher than in the west, and many Germans fear a dangerous connection between rising intolerance and the growing number of jobless, disillusioned young men with no clear futures or goals.

There were no reports of any clashes in Dresden itself.