Archive/File: pub/camps/sachsenhausen/press/1992-vandalism
Last-Modified: 1995/08/10

	POTSDAM, Germany (AP) -- Two right-wing militants went on trial
Thursday for a second time on charges of burning down part of a
Jewish museum at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial.
	The Sept. 26, 1992, fire came at a peak of right-wing violence
in Germany and sparked candlelight processions by thousands of
concerned Germans. Tougher laws and police presence has reduced the
violence, but foreigners are still frequently attacked and Jewish
cemeteries and memorials often vandalized.
	Ingo Kehn, an unemployed 22-year-old, and Thomas Haberland, a
24-year-old railroad worker, are accused of burning the camp's last
intact barracks, where an exhibit on Sachsenhausen had been
installed just weeks earlier.
	About 100,000 people, half of them Jews, died in the Nazi camp
outside Berlin during World War II.
	The two men were acquitted at their first trial in October 1993
on grounds of insufficient evidence, but the federal appeals court
found Judge Klaus Przybilla's reasoning faulty and ordered a new
trial.
	They confessed shortly after their arrests, saying they drove to
Sachsenhausen with a group of 15 skinheads, poured gasoline into
four bottles and hurled them at the barracks.
	But during the trial they withdrew their confessions. Kehn, whom
a court psychologist described as feebleminded, gave four other
versions of how he spent the night of the fire.
	As the trial opened Thursday, both maintained their innocence.
Kehn said he was with his girlfriend that night, and Haberland said
he had confessed under police coercion.

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