Hamburg – Printers at several universities across Germany produced antisemitic
leaflets on or before Hitler’s birthday this week, after hackers appeared to
break into their computer systems, according to university officials.
Universities in Hamburg, Lüneburg and Tübingen confirmed that printers
connected to their computer networks had suddenly started churning out the
leaflets, most of them on Wednesday, the anniversary of Hitler’s birth in
Braunau, Austria, in 1889.
At least six other German universities reported similar episodes,
according to the German news agency DPA.
The leaflet produced at the University of Hamburg carried the slogan,
“Europe, awake!” and alluded to the mass migration that brought more than one
million people, many from the Middle East, to the Continent last year. “Europe
is being flooded by enemy strangers,” it read, in part.
Without naming Hitler, the leaflet referred to “the words of a former European
Führer” who blamed the Jews for bringing non-Europeans to the Rhineland.
Christian Matheis, a spokesman for the University of Hamburg, and Karl
G. Rijkhoek, a spokesman for the University of Tübingen, said their
institutions had filed formal complaints with the police and the judicial
authorities after learning that their computer networks appeared to have been
breached.
About 190 leaflets were printed on the Tübingen campus, Mr. Rijkhoek
said, but fewer than 10 were printed at the University of Lüneburg, said a
spokesman, Henning Zühlsdorff.
