NEO-NAZIS BURN COPY OF ANNE FRANK'S DIARY

Neo-Nazis hijack gala to burn Anne Frank diary (Daily Mail, UK)
German neo-Nazis tore up and burned a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank after hijacking a traditional gala. Around 100 skinheads cheered and shouted Sieg Heil as the most poignant memoir of the Holocaust years went up in flames. They also burned a U.S. flag and sang banned Nazi songs.

Germans were horrified by the latest outrage from the far Right, which comes as the country rides a new wave of peaceful patriotism as it hosts the World Cup. Uwe Hornburg, a prosecutor investigating the incident, said: 'I am appalled. In 20 years as a prosecutor I have never had a case quite so disturbing.' The book-burning, which has chilling parallels to the 1930s when Nazi supporters made pyres of books written by Jews, follows a string of high-profile attacks by racist gangs on blacks.

The neo-Nazis descended on a field in the village of Pretzien, Saxony, where local people were re-enacting a pagan rite celebrating midsummer. A bonfire was lit and the book and flag destroyed. Before they burned the book, the extremists used it as a football in a drunken kick-around.