Denial of the Holocaust and then the attack
In the late 1990s, gangs of young neo-Nazis sought to assert themselves in public, often through intimidation and violence. On November 8, 1998, several skinheads from outside Prague gathered in a bar, drinking heavily and shouting slogans such as ‘Heil Hitler,’ ‘Death to the Jews,’ and ‘Jews out’ at around 5a.m. Their behavior drew the ire of other young patrons, one of whom revealed that he had Jewish ancestry. He was a soldier. The confrontation escalated when a neo-Nazi began denying the Holocaust and, outside the bar, stabbed the man in the stomach, leaving him seriously injured. As the victim lay bleeding, the attacker shouted ‘Sieg Heil’ over his body. This was one of the first major anti-Semitic attacks since the fall of communism. The perpetrator was convicted of a racially motivated violent crime and, along with others, of supporting and promoting neo-Nazism, underscoring the growing concern about extremism in post-communist Central Europe.
„The stabbing of my friend by a neo-Nazi because of his Jewish background was one of the main reasons why I joined the police force and worked in the counter-extremism department.“
One of the witnesses who later became a high-ranking police officer in the field of combating extremism
Further Reading / Sources
U.S. Department of State Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 1999
Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (1999), Czech Republic
Kriminologické a právní aspekty extremismu.
Marešová, Alena et al. (1999), Praha: Institut pro kriminologii a sociální prevenci
Zpráva o postupu státních orgánů při postihu trestných činů motivovaných rasismem a xenofobií nebo páchaných příznivci extremistických skupin a o aktivitách extremistických uskupení na území České republiky v roce 1998
Ministry of Interrior of the Czech Republic