Nearly 30 years ago, the Cold War’s end opened Germany’s border to the formerly Soviet-dominated east. Asylum seekers from poor and war-torn nations poured across it. A violent backlash from ultra-right-wing Germans ensued.
“Refugees carry stones, sticks — even mace — for protection, walk in groups by day and rarely leave home at night,” USA Today’s roving correspondent Jack Kelley reported on Nov. 23, 1992. Fortunately, Kelley wrote, decent Germans “hide refugees and Jews in their homes to protect them.”
Based in Berlin at the time, I felt mystified, and a bit incompetent: Why had skinheads admitted possessing illegal guns and grenades — another stunning, exclusive detail in his story — to Kelley, but not to German or Germany-based U.S. reporters? And good Germans were hiding Jews, but we hadn’t even heard rumors of it?
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