Leaders Seek Ways to Stem Germany’s Rightist Violence

While police used riot gear to fight one of the worst weekends of rightist violence in Germany to date, the nation’s leaders searched their own arsenal Sunday for weapons to halt the wave of hate.

In more than 20 cities, neo-Nazi youths tossed firebombs at refugee homes, smashed windows, burned cars and fought street battles with increasingly larger, more aggressive contingents of riot police. At least 42 people were arrested.

Politicians are alarmed not only by the mayhem but also by the image it is giving a nation trying to overcome its Nazi past. They took to the airwaves, newspaper columns and streets to offer ideas for stopping the violence.

Officials are considering toughening laws to crack down on the violence. Berlin police made a preemptive strike late Saturday night by uncharacteristically swooping down on about 600 people near a refugee home, dispersing the crowd and making 11 arrests on weapons charges.

One political suggestion is to stem the flow of refugees to the former East Germany, where most of the recent attacks have taken place.

That idea, which has been proposed before, was voiced Sunday by Hans-Joachim Jentsch, the justice minister in eastern Germany’s Thuringia state.

“It would be in the interest of peace in the new federal states,” he said.

Even Wolfgang Thierse, the top eastern German in the opposition Social Democrats, which champions refugee rights, said that reducing eastern Germany’s intake of refugees is worth thinking about.

Germany has been struggling with rightist violence for the past two years, when refugees began flooding the nation after the East Bloc collapsed in 1989. So far this year, 274,000 foreigners have applied for asylum, already eclipsing last year’s record.