Cracking Down on the Right

Bonn has finally chosen to curb neo-Nazi violence. But can the effort succeed in the face of public apathy -- and sometimes antipathy -- toward foreigners?

SOMETIMES ONLY DEATH WILL STIR THE living. Last week the continuing horror at three deaths from a fire bombing -- of a 51-year-old grandmother, her niece and her granddaughter -- and the torrent of denunciations that followed the deaths did just that, shocking German officialdom into wakefulness. Demonstrations that began the day after the Nov. 23 attack in the northern city of Molln persisted through a funeral gathering in Hamburg that attracted 10,000, and then into last weekend, when a crowd many times as large gathered in Munich. Images of marchers carrying banners asking such questions as HOW MANY CHILDREN WILL...

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