Anti-Semitic graffiti plagues Berlin

berlin (jta) | Anti-Semitic graffiti has appeared across Berlin. A Soviet war memorial in Treptow, in former East Berlin, was the latest site defaced when police found a spray-painted Star of David there this week.

The incidents apparently began Oct. 14, when stars were found painted on the Anne Frank Center and on the gravesites of Bertolt Brecht, Heinrich Mann and Johannes Becher, among other locations.

The following day, four stars were daubed on City Hall. Observers of the right-wing extremist and radical Muslim scenes suggested the graffiti is the work of neo-Nazis. There have been 147 anti-Semitic crimes reported in 2005, up from 120 last year.

Lawyer fined for Holocaust denial

berlin (jta) | A lawyer in Germany was fined $2,700 for questioning the Holocaust. While defending a neo-Nazi client, the 36-year-old attorney had claimed in court that it was “not possible to refer to the genocide of the Jews as something obvious.”

The attorney, who was not named in news reports, also questioned the constitutionality of a German law banning Holocaust denial. As for his client, the neo-Nazi was found guilty of incitement to hatred and slander against the state, but he went into hiding before his jail sentence of two years and nine months was delivered.