German woman devoted to removing Nazi graffiti

Source: Associated Press

Mar 26, 7:58 AM EDT
German woman devoted to removing Nazi graffiti
By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER
Associated Press

BERLIN (AP) -- Irmela Mensah-Schramm stopped abruptly at the crudely sprayed swastika on the wall of a pedestrian underpass. Whipping out a can of spray paint from her cotton tote bag, she quickly made short work of it, turning the neo-Nazi symbol into a nondescript black splotch.

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"I scratched off the first sticker in 1986, at a bus stop in front of my house," Mensah-Schramm said as she ambled through the streets armed with her spray paint and metal scraper. It demanded "Freedom for Rudolf Hess" - Adolf Hitler's deputy, who at the time was still alive and in prison in Berlin.

"The sticker was there all day and I couldn't understand why nobody else took it off - people can be so ignorant," she said.

For 25 years, Mensah-Schramm has taken it on herself to clean Berlin of neo-Nazi propaganda scrawled by skinheads and other right-wing groups. She calls herself the "political cleaning lady of the nation" and during one of her recent tours of the city she said that in the last four years alone, she has scratched away more than 36,000 right-wing stickers.





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"People can be so ignorant."

of person everywhere.