Continuation of anti-Semitic violence
National Socialist sentiment was still widespread among the German population after 1945. It showed itself in repeated harassment of and assaults on Jews, and in the desecration of Jewish cemeteries.
Jubilant supporters bearing Jud Süß film director Veit Harlan aloft following his acquittal in Hamburg. After the Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime
filed criminal charges, the court found that Harlan's antisemitic propaganda film could not be considered to have 'abetted persecution'. The presiding judge, Walter Tyrolf, had served as public prosecutor during the Nazi regime. In that position he sought the death penalty for numerous defendants before the Hanseatic Special Court.
The acquittal of Hamburg businessman Friedrich Nieland in January 1959 by the Hamburg Higher Regional Court for distributing an antisemitic inflammatory pamphlet caused public outrage. It led to a law against incitement to racial hatred (Section 130 of the German Criminal Code).
Following media reports about swastika graffiti on the Cologne synagogue, there were copycat acts throughout Germany at the turn of the year 1959/60. In Hamburg, at least 123 incidents were reported in the course of this antisemitic wave, including numerous incidents of verbal abuse.
Antisemitic lettering reading "Jews out" under the window of the Jewish woman Ilse Wolff in a rear building at Wohlwillstraße 12 in Hamburg St. Pauli, August 1960.