Gypsies Win in German Court
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FRANKFURT, West Germany — West Germany’s Central Gypsy Council on Thursday won a court battle for the right to call a Social Democratic mayor a racist and to compare him to the Nazis.
A court in Frankfurt threw out a libel suit against the Gypsies by Guenther Metzger, mayor of the southern city of Darmstadt, ruling that their allegations against him were justified.
The council had publicly charged that Metzger’s treatment of Gypsy families in the city was the worst example of racism in West Germany since the Nazi era.
It had also charged that he ordered the demolition of a Gypsy house in 1983 with the same arguments that were used by the Nazis to brand the German Gypsy population as “vermin.”
The court ruled that Metzger’s behavior toward the Gypsies was entirely responsible for the criticism leveled at him.
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