Right-wingers in Germany on trial for burning Anne Frank diary

dpa German Press Agency Published: Monday February 26, 2007

Magdeburg, Germany- Seven far-right Germans in their 20s
who flung a copy of Anne Frank's Diary into a bonfire amid cheers
from beer-drinking neo-Nazis went on trial for sedition Monday.
The Summer Solstice Party last year in the small town of Pretzien,
130 kilometres west of Berlin, caused uproar in Germany last year
after it was revealed that the town mayor and police were also
present and saw nothing wrong in the book and a US flag being burned.

Frank, a Jewish girl who died of typhus in 1945 at the age of 15
in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, is a figure of hatred to
Holocaust deniers because of her compelling story of life in hiding
in Amsterdam before her capture by the Nazis.

At a court in Magdeburg, one of the accused, 25, admitted flinging
the book in the fire on the evening of June 24 last year but denied
sedition and said he had not wished to trivialize her ordeal. A
second man who fed the fire denied they had planned the stunt in
advance.

Public prosecutor Arnold Murra said, "They mocked Anne Frank, and
in her name, every victim of the concentration camps."

Denying the Holocaust is punishable in Germany as sedition by up
to five years' jail. Judges were expected to examine the right-wing
motivations of all the accused, who range in age from 24 to 29. The
other five men have not yet been heard.

The Solstice Party was a public event with beer and food in
Pretzien's community building and was organized by the East Bank of
the Elbe Homeland Association, a group set up by neo-Nazis and since
dissolved.

Thomas Jauch, a lawyer for the 25-year-old, said, "He is sincerely
sorry that he was misunderstood." The accused's intention had been to
"symbolically free himself" from the gloom cast by the Nazi period on
German history, the lawyer claimed to sceptical judges.

The man went on to deny witness testimony that he shouted "It's
all lies anyway," as he burned the book. Asked how he would rate
himself politically, he described himself as "tinted" right.

The men are also accused of insulting the dead. They have not been
charged in connection with the burning of the US flag, a symbol that
neo-Nazis revile because of the Allied bombing of Germany and the
post-war "denazification" of the country.

Town police were rebuked last year for not stopping the burning in
Pretzien, which is located in formerly communist eastern Germany. The
growth of neo-Nazi clubs among youths in the east's economically
blighted small towns has caused national concern.

© 2006 - dpa German Press Agency