Hitler's deputy exhumed, cremated in Germany

Germany: The remains of Adolf Hitler's one-time deputy Rudolf Hess have been exhumed in Germany and his grave destroyed after it became a shrine for neo-Nazis, authorities said Thursday.

The bones were removed and the monument razed early on Wednesday morning "in an operation not open to the public," Roland Schoeffel, deputy mayor of the small town of Wunsiedel, southern Germany, told AFP.

His remains, removed along with the headstone with the epitaph "Ich hab's gewagt" ("I dared"), which will be destroyed, were placed in a new coffin and burnt immediately, with the ashes due to be scattered at sea.

Hess had been laid to rest according to his wishes in Wunsiedel churchyard in Bavaria after his 1987 suicide aged 93 in Spandau Prison in West Berlin, where he had been the jail's only prisoner for two decades.But his final resting place became Germany's top pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis, with hundreds of skinheads marching in the 10,000-strong town on every August 17 anniversary of Hess's death until a 2005 ban. AFP