More than 200,000 Germans marched with political and religious leaders through Berlin yesterday evening to protest against a rising spectre of violent xenophobia and anti-Semitism that has shocked the country.
"Human dignity is untouchable, so says our constitution. We cannot and will not tolerate people becoming victims of violence because of their skin colour, religion or social status," said the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder.
November 9th is a day that commemorates the best and worst in German history, a fact not lost on the those marching in Berlin yesterday.
Last night was the anniversary of the Nazi Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass pogrom against Jews in 1938 when synagogues and Jewish businesses around Germany were burned down and 30,000 Jews were shipped off to death camps.
The date also marks the anniversaries of the founding of German democracy, Hitler's first attempt to gain power and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
The Chancellor was joined on the demonstration, called a "revolt of the decent", by well-known figures from German political and cultural life including Nobel literature laureate, Gunter Grass, and tennis stars Steffi Graf and Boris Becker.
The demonstration began with a wreath-laying ceremony to commemorate Kristallnacht in front of the synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse, in the heart of Berlin's old Jewish neighbourhood.
The president of the central committee of Jews in Germany, Mr Paul Spiegel, said it was time for the majority of Germans who abhorred extreme-right violence to end their silence and show they had learned from history.
"We need a clear signal that the non-Jewish majority wants Jews and the Jewish community in this country," he said.
The demonstration moved slowly through the centre of the city to the Brandenburg Gate, focus of world attention with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
On a crisp November evening Pariser-Platz in front of the gate was once again thronged with people, parents with prams, students with banners and children with green "No to Neo-Nazis" balloons.
The demonstration continued late into the evening with Daniel Barenboim conducting Berlin's Staatskapelle Orchestra in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in front of the Brandenburg Gate, as of last week covered in scaffolding until 2002.
The demonstration came a day after Mr Schroder and his cabinet agreed to press ahead with a ban on the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD). The federal government says the NPD has Nazi characteristics and holds it responsible for a wave of race-motivated attacks in Germany.
Today the federal parliament's upper house, the Bundesrat, is expected to approve an application to the constitutional court to ban the NPD.
Last Saturday 1,200 skinheads marched through Berlin protesting the proposed NPD ban, calling for "political discussion not political gags".
The issue of race-motivated violence has been forced to the top of the political agenda in Germany after a summer of high-profile attacks against racial minorities and synagogues.
The opposition Christian Democrats caused a furious debate about immigration and nationalism recently by saying that immigrants in Germany should integrate themselves into German society and conform to a German Leitkultur or "predominant culture".
Mr Schroder accused the conservatives of appealing to extremists to win votes.
