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Anti-Semitic incident in German school

Updated: 16/Oct/2006 15:10

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BERLIN (EJP)--- School children in a German state forced a girl pupil to parade in the playground holding aloft a sign saying that she was the "biggest pig" for having befriended Jews.

The language on the sign was straight from the Nazi era when women who befriended or cohabited with Jews were singled out for state humiliation.

"I am the biggest pig in this place because I hang around with Jews," read the placard that the 16-year-old was forced to carry.

It is unclear whether the girl actually had Jewish friends.

The secondary school in Parey in Saxony-Anhalt, in east Germany, was raided by police on Thursday after the incident, and three pupils were detained for questioning.

Racist attacks

That comes just months after racist attacks in eastern Germany threatened to blight the country’s hosting of the World Cup.

Before the tournament a black man was beaten into a coma at a bus stop, prompting ethnic groups – backed by a former top politician – to declare that parts of the former Communist east were no-go zones for foreigners.

Also, this summer drunken neo-Nazis flung a copy of "The Diary of Anne Frank" on to a bonfire as they sang Nazi songs.

Armin Friedrichs, the police chief in Parey, said: "Never in my long experience have I heard of such a terrible act against a teenager."

Saxony-Anhalt's Interior Minister Holger Hoevelmann called the incident "repulsive," and a file has been sent to the local public prosecutor’s office on three boys aged between 15 and 16.

He added: "People were humiliated in this manner by Nazi party storm troopers during their years in power. It is shattering to think that such a thing could happen again to someone growing up in our country."

Experts blame high unemployment in the east – over 20 per cent in some places – and the Communist regime that ruled for 40 years for making Nazism glamorous to a generation that did not experience its horrors.

In Germany, it is an offence to glorify anything about the Nazis, to make the Hitler salute or to display the swastika or S.S. symbols. If the three boys involved in the Parey incident are charged with offences against the constitution and found guilty, they could be jailed for up to six months.