Passengers Assaulted

These are among the more dramatic events that have been reported with shock and horror, but numerous other acts of violence have occured and - at a lesser pace - continue to take place to this day: assaults on individuals, brawls in youth centers, attacks on homes and businesses. For example, in October 1994, a gang of some 20 Skinheads boarded a streetcar in Berlin and severely assaulted passengers they believed were foreigners. The following months, police in Hanau, near Frankfurt, broke up a Skinhead gang of 20 who were suspected of attacking goreigners, a handicapped person and a former synagogye. Seized by police in their raid on the gang were guns, ammunition and banned Nazi propaganda. Two of those arrested were suspected of manufacturing homemade bombs. The gang had links to banned neo-Nazi organizations including the Viking Youth.

According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Consitution (Bundesamt fuer Verfassungsschutz), the number of violent right-wing extremists in 1993 was about 5,600, many of them Skinheads. This was a decline from the 1992 estimate of of 6,400. In 1993, Skinheads also constituted a large proportion of those who perpetrated 2,232 acts of right-wing violence, including seven homocides and 20 attempted homocides. The comparable 1992 figures were 2,639 violent acts and 18 homocides. The numbers, while showing some improvement, are still shockingly high.

Work Cited

Anti-Defamation League. The Skinhead International: A Worldwide Survey of Neo-Nazi Skinheads. New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1995. Anti-Defamation League, 823 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017.

Disclaimer: not all skinheads are neo-nazis or white supremacists. There are many skinheads who are non- or anti-racist, and who come from a variety of different religious and cultural backgrounds. Nizkor recognizes their achievements in anti-racism: they are part of the traditional, non-racist skinhead subculture and are not the perpetrators of the hate crimes discussed here.

Unless otherwise specified, the word "skinhead" within these pages refers only to neo-Nazi and white supremacist skinheads, the perpetrators of hate crimes and participants in racist organizations. We cannot edit the body of the text above, because it was not written by Nizkor, and to change the wording would be fraudulent. Please keep in mind that not all skinheads are racist.

The original plaintext version of this file is available via ftp.

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