Neo-Nazis Held as Hundreds Protest Attacks

Police detained dozens of neo-Nazi supporters trying to hold a rally Saturday, while hundreds of Germans took to the streets in an anti-Nazi protest decrying a rise in racist attacks.

The arrests came after courts banned the extreme-right National Democratic Party, or NPD, from holding a rally in Bad Berka, near Weimar in eastern Germany, calling it a danger to public safety. About 100 skinheads were detained as they tried to attend despite the ban.

About 1,200 people turned out for the anti-Nazi demonstration in Duesseldorf, where an explosion July 27 at a rail station injured 10 immigrants from the former Soviet Union, six of them Jewish.

Although police have yet to determine a motive, the possibility that the grenade was set off by right-wing extremists has triggered demands for action to stop daily neo-Nazi offenses, from spray-painting of swastikas to slayings.

Some in the Duesseldorf crowd noted sadly that a recent rally demanding tougher leash laws for attack dogs attracted nearly 10 times as many people.

“Sometimes I’m afraid it’s already much too late,” said Elisabeth Debener, an 81-year-old who lived through the Nazi era. More than 50 years later, one of her acquaintances is harassed on the street because of his dark skin when they walk together, she said.

In Eisenach, more than 300 people gathered Friday to show support for two African men who were kicked, spit at and chased through the town by a gang a week ago.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s government is considering having the fringe NPD declared unconstitutional for agitating against foreigners, leftists and other minorities.

But Interior Minister Otto Schily said in Der Spiegel magazine that banning the party runs the risk of sending its members underground and making them more militant.