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German trial shows far right’s grip

SALZHEMMENDORF, Germany — As a volunteer firefighter, Sascha D. was among the crew that rushed to the home of an immigrant family after it was firebombed in this small town in central Germany last summer.

But before he arrived, a court was told this month, Sascha, 25, who is fond of late-night drinking and right-wing metal bands, and a friend, Dennis L., carefully made the Molotov cocktail themselves, using a pen to push wood shavings into the gasoline-filled bottle.

Dennis, 31, who liked to daub swastikas on village walls, then hurled it through a window of the street-level apartment of a 34-year-old single mother of three from Zimbabwe who remains so traumatized she still has trouble sleeping, the court heard. German law protects the identity of the accused; only first names and initials of surnames are made public.

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“If the Negro burns, I will really celebrate,” Dennis said afterward, according to Saskia B., 24, who served as the driver for the two but is now testifying against her friends.

Dennis denies he made the remark about an attack that did not injure anyone because the room hit was, by good fortune, empty that night. But little else seems disputed in the trial of the three friends on attempted murder charges, a rare prosecution against one of almost 1,200 attacks on refugee shelters — including some 100 arsons — since January 2015.

In fact, what made the attack in this impoverished town of 9,000, about 25 miles southwest of Hanover, exceptional is that the culprits were quickly caught and confessed — even as assaults on refugee shelters have become routine, averaging more than two a day since the start of last year.

As Germany struggles to absorb more than 1 million refugees, the attacks present an increasingly pressing challenge for Chancellor Angela Merkel and local authorities, who face a rise in right-wing racism, tinged with Nazi ideas.

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So far, the record of law enforcement has been spotty, as such cases are left in the hands of the overstretched local authorities under Germany’s diffuse federal system, which does not have a national hate crime statute.

“The deeds are usually committed at night and on the weekend,” Frank Neubacher, a professor at the Institute for Criminology at Cologne University, noted in an e-mail. “Impartial witnesses often do not exist, and the perpetrators leave little trace.”

But more hostility toward refugees since the start of a year that began with sexual assaults linked to migrants in Cologne has also hardly discouraged the arsons, the latest of which occurred early Sunday in the Saxon town of Bautzen. There, a drunken crowd cheered as a hotel that had been converted into a refugee shelter burned, and tried to obstruct firefighters from dousing the flames. No one has been arrested.

The arson attacks have become a German specialty. Just a few such attacks have been recorded in Sweden, and not one in neighboring Austria, despite a similar percentage of new migrants, and a far-right party polling 30 percent or more.

In Germany, the pattern of accelerating violence, experts say, coincides with the emergence of the anti-Islam, anti-immigration group Pegida since late 2014.

“Quite new right-wing extremist groups have long been building on the Internet,” said Andreas Zick, a professor at Bielefeld University who heads its Institute for Interdisciplinary Research Into Conflict and Violence. “The readiness to approve and use violence has gotten stronger and stronger in the last two years.”

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Dennis and his friends were said in court to have been among the members of an online chat room known as Swastika Garage.