Memorial Disrupted

Sixteen youths between 15 and 24 years old were taken into police custody in the small city of Frankfurt an der Oder, located east of Berlin on the Polish border, for disrupting a commemorative ceremony on the site of a synagogue that had been destroyed during a Nazi pogrom in 1938.

The hooligans, some of them already known as right-wing extremists, tore flowers out of the memorial stone at the synagogue site and threw candles in the street, according to a police spokesperson.

They shouted "Sieg Heil," a common Nazi chant, when authorities arrived on the scene.

Night of Broken Glass

On Nov. 9, 1938, Nazis and ordinary citizens ransacked and burned thousands of Jewish homes, businesses and cemeteries throughout Germany. Some 30,000 people were deported to concentration camps.

The large-scale pogrom is known as "Kristallnacht," or the "Night of Broken Glass," and was provoked by a speech by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

"Right-wing extremism is increasing"

At the inauguration of a new synagogue Thursday in Munich, President Horst Köhler said, "Even today our dreams of normal Jewish life in Germany are confronted with a reality in which there is open and latent anti-Semitism and the number of violent acts motivated by right-wing extremism is increasing."

Police were prepared for right-wing riots at other memorial events in Munich and Essen, despite bans placed on demonstrations, but both locations remained quiet.