Seven Days Of Hatred

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Although Italy has had an anti-hate crime law on the books since 1975, the police did not consider this a hate crime. "This was more of a vendetta," says an Italian police official. Very often, hate crimes are dismissed as the unimpressive work of mindless, bored youths out on a bender. And very often they are. But researchers generally agree that hate crimes are not simply caused by poverty or ignorance; often they grow out of a combination of high youth unemployment, the presence of many new immigrants, and a lack of law enforcement. It is this third element that is easiest to remedy. But, says Jack Levin, a sociologist at Northeastern University in Boston who has written extensively on hate crime in Europe and America, "the police in Europe haven't been trained to recognize hate crime."

8 P.M., SATURDAY
PRITZWALK, GERMANY
Andy Gaschler, a 16-year-old high school student, was walking with friends in the pedestrian marketplace of this small town north of Berlin. Gaschler was wearing a Palestinian scarf and a backpack with the slogan nazis out written on it. (The day before, a neo-Nazi gang had firebombed a Vietnamese snack-bar in town.) Now a group of neo-Nazis, obvious by their shaved heads, stopped him. "Didn't I see you before?" one of the skinheads asked Gaschler, before allegedly hitting him in the face and setting his scarf on fire. Gaschler called on his friends to help, but before they could respond, the thug had set Gaschler's backpack ablaze, too, he says. "My friends couldn't intervene as there were eight or nine of them," he told Time. One friend did manage to call the police, who arrived too late to make an arrest. The next day, an 18-year-old man named Robin Grab was charged with inflicting bodily harm based on Gaschler's description.

The only reason I am alive today is because one of them said 'Stop, he isn't worth killing'. — IFTIKHAR ASLAM, Victim of Hate Crime

Because of its past, Germany has one of the most impressive systems for tracking hate crimes in Europe. There were almost 11,000 politically motivated criminal acts committed by rightwing extremists in 2002, according to the Bundeskriminalamt, Germany's federal police agency, an 8% increase over 2001. Just as worrisome is a shift in mainstream discourse, says Salomon Korn, vice president of the Central council of Jews in Germany. "The change now is that people are getting more outspoken. They don't see the same amount of risk in making anti-Semitic statements."

9.30 P.M., SUNDAY
NIKAIA, GREECE
Iftikhar Aslam came to Greece from Pakistan three years ago on a student visa. He soon had to give up his studies to work at a plastic factory to send money home. On the night of Nov. 9, he was walking home from evening prayers through this working-class suburb of Athens with five friends. "We were passing through a local square, and these everyday-looking guys were standing there shouting 'Bloody Pakis' and other abuse," he says. There were about 50 young men, and some of them began throwing bottles at Aslam and his friends. They broke into a run; four of them got away, but Aslam and one of his friends were surrounded. "I was pushed to the pavement and kicked in the face and ribs several times," he says. "They did not look drunk or out of control. They seemed to know exactly what they were doing. The only reason I am alive today is because one of them said 'Stop, he isn't worth killing.'"

When the police arrived, they found Aslam sitting on the sidewalk with blood streaming down his face. "They told me to forget what happened and go home in order not to make things worse," he says. This month, Greece — which has also experienced a surge in anti-Semitic crimes — is expected to adopt a new law under which Greeks found guilty of discriminating against religious or ethnic groups will face up to a year in prison. But a law would need someone to enforce it. In Aslam's case, the police have yet to begin inquiries.

MONDAY MORNING
TRUTNOV, CZECH REPUBLIC
There is a cluster of plain sandstone tombstones, some carrying names, others a simple Star of David, at the edge of the cemetery in Trutnov. They line a narrow path that leads up to a polished granite plaque. In the brutally blunt language common to postwar reckoning, the sign reads: here are buried 41 jewish girls murdered by the Nazis at a labor camp in Porici near Trutnov. The girls had all been slave laborers, and they had died between the ages of 14 and 29. On Monday morning, Lucie Motycková, the caretaker, noticed that 15 of the tombstones had been kicked over and broken off cleanly at the base. It had probably happened the night before, on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night the Nazi pogrom against Jews was launched. Motyckova suspects the perpetrators were interrupted — or else they would have finished the job, knocking over all the tombstones and spraypainting death to Jews on the granite plaque, as they had five years ago.