A small town in Germany faces hate charge by Yacine Le Forestier DOLGENBRODT, Germany, Aug 26 (AFP) - The quiet village of Dolgenbrodt, an hour's drive south of Berlin in former East Germany, located by the still waters of a lake amid the muffled silence of oak forests, has seen its idyll shattered by strident accusations that it is a hotbed of racism. To the anguish of the village's inhabitants, the Berlin daily Tageszeitung has charged that Dolgenbrodt last year paid skinheads to set fire to a hostel for asylum-seekers who threatened to disturb their tranquillity. On October 31 last, a brand new holiday centre was ravaged by an arson attack the day before a batch of 86 asylum-seekers were to move in. Almost a year later the blackened ruins remain in mute testimony to hate, the word itself -- "hass", in German -- painted in red on one of the remaining walls. The numerous arson attacks on hostels for foreigners reported in Germany over the past year have invariably been ascribed to neo-Nazi vandals working alone. An attack organised by a community, if the newspaper report were confirmed, would form a precedent that no-one wants to contemplate. "I can't believe that my villagers do such a thing," mayoress Ute Preissler said, shaking her head. "They are perfectly normal people, serious and honest. According to the Tageszeitung, the village's 260 inhabitants clubbed together to form a kitty of 2,000 marks (almost 1,200 dollars) to hire a group of skinheads in the region to carry out the job for them. They even went so far as to provide the material for a Molotov cocktail, the newspaper said. Investigators who had made no comment until the newspaper broke the silence admitted that their conclusions were pointing "in that direction," and a regional minister described the matter as "extremely serious." Law officers said a youth had told investigators last May that several young people had been paid by the villagers of Dolgenbrodt to set fire to the hostel. "That's rubbish," said Gerd Graefen, 45, one of the few villagers not to barricade himself behind shutters in order to avoid the questions of reporters. He admitted however that the whole community had been in arms against the hostel, organising petitions and protest actions. "Just imagine -- 80 gypsies and blacks here nicking our things and burglarising our houses," Graefen said indignantly. "A lot of us had already put up bars and planks in front of our windows, or bought guard dogs and installed alarm systems. Some people wanted to put trees across the road." A few doors along, Hans Krueger swears that he never paid a pfennig to have anyone burn down the hostel. "But it's true we weren't too unhappy at the way it turned out," he admitted. "Life would have been impossible with gypsies around. Now we can live in peace." One of the villagers until recently had the flag of the former imperial navy raised in his garden. The flag, though not illegal like nazi flags bearing the swastika, is often paraded by neo-nazis and their supporters. Fearing incidents, local police persuaded the man to take the flag down
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