Monday, August 16, 1999

PHOTO SHOWS relatives of Bubis, and
(centre) German president among mourners 

Tomb vandal calls Bubis 'thief, cheat'

By Meital Fried,
Ha'aretz Correspondent

Meir Mendelssohn, an artist who poured paint onto the grave of German Jewish community leader Ignatz Bubis at his burial in Tel Aviv yesterday, said afterwards that Bubis was a criminal who owned whorehouses and was partly responsible for the student riots of 1968 in Germany.

"I poured black paint on Bubis's grave, I did it in a theatrical manner ... I committed a crime and defiled the dead, but I don't regret it - the opposite, I want to get people to think how an intellectual could do such a thing and consider his motives, and then they will discover horrible things.

"Bubis exploited his Jewishness, he was a thief, a cheat and a liar, and after his death many things will come out. He was a Judenrat in his concentration camp."

[Bubis obituary]

Our opinion

  THE allegation that Ignatz Bubis was a "Judenrat" in a Konzentrationslager is a particularly nasty defamation; these officials are claimed to have collaborated with the Nazis, as the price for securing preferential treatment. Ha'aretz is Israel's leading national newspaper.