Germany yesterday solemnly marked the 60th anniversary of the Night of Broken Glass, a Nazi pogrom seen as a harbinger of the Holocaust, with calls for vigilance against racism.
President Roman Herzog and Chancellor Gerhard Schroder led a ceremony in a restored Berlin synagogue to mark the Kristallnacht anniversary, when thousands of synagogues and Jewish shops were destroyed by Nazis.
"The night of November 9th and 10th, 1938 is one of the most horrible and shameful moments in Germany history," Mr Herzog said.
"It was only a precursor of what was to come. But its events were also in themselves such a slap in the face of humanity and civilisation that we must be reminded of this date again and again," he said.
On the night of November 9th-10th, 1938, Nazi stormtroopers ransacked Jewish-owned shops and set synagogues ablaze across Germany and Austria in an act which most historians agree was directly sanctioned by Adolf Hitler. At least 91 Jews were killed.