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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.

For the 65-year-old retiree, it’s all in a day’s work.

“I scratched off the first sticker in 1986, at a bus stop in front of my house,” said Mensah-Schramm, who is not Jewish, as she ambled through the streets armed with her spray paint and metal scraper. It demanded “Freedom for Rudolf Hess” — Hitler’s deputy, who at the time was still alive and in prison in Berlin.

Irmela Mensah-Schramm, 65, paints over a swastika on a street in Berlin. photo/ap/markus schreiber

“The sticker was there all day and I couldn’t understand why nobody else took it off,” she said. “People can be so ignorant.”

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.

She said that given Berlin’s atrocious Nazi past, seeing racist slurs sprayed on walls across the German capital,  made her angry and she felt a personal responsibility to do something about them.

“Freedom of speech ends where hatred and racism begin,” Mensah-Schramm said.

Since her retirement in 2006, Mensah-Schramm, who worked helping students with special needs, tromps the city six days a week, trying to track down all possible Nazi propaganda in the German capital.

Before she makes the racist slogans disappear, she documents everything, taking pictures of all the “evil stuff” she has found. She keeps several folders with hundreds of stickers demanding “foreigners get out,” “Jews into the oven” or “Sieg Heil,” the infamous salute used by the Nazis.

The number of far-right extremists in Germany is small — some 26,000, according to the most recent estimate from country’s domestic intelligence agency — and when neo-Nazis hold demonstrations they are invariably dwarfed by counter-protesters. Still, the far-right National Democratic Party has garnered enough votes to make it into two states’ parliaments, and in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt earlier this month more than 12 percent of voters under the age of 30 cast their ballot for the party.

Some passers-by applaud Mensah-Schramm spontaneously when they see her grassroots response to neo-Nazi graffiti, but others get upset.

While it is illegal in Germany to express Nazi ideology in words or images, police say it is not always legal to remove the graffiti either, because the process may deface or destroy other people’s property.

“If she sees Nazi slogans anywhere, she should call us to take care of it, not spray over it herself — that’s willful damage of property,” police spokesman Michael Merkle said.

Skinhead groups have posted taunts about her online and several times property owners have reported her to the police. So far, nobody has successfully pressed charges against her, she said.

“Neo-Nazis and private security personnel have harassed and bumped me more than once,” Mensah-Schramm said, adding that she has given up calling the police for support “because they rarely ever help me anyway, and don’t remove racists slogans even if I tell them to do so.”

Mensah-Schramm said that even though new stickers or graffiti often appear again soon after she’s removed it, she will never give up her work.

One recent day, she walked through the streets of Berlin’s Rudow neighborhood carrying her trademark white tote bag, which has “Against Nazi” written across it.

She found several stickers on street signs demanding immigrants get out of the country and depicting the German parliament Reichstag as a mosque.

Mensah-Schramm resolutely wiped her white hair out of her face, cursed out the neo-Nazis, and went to work.

“I may be the craziest woman in all of Germany,” she said. “But the only way to get rid of those Nazis is to consistently work against them.”

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The FBI used two informants when investigating the alleged “241” murder plot, according to federal court documents unsealed Friday.

One informant was promoted to the “command staff” of Francis “Schaeffer “ Cox’s Peacemakers Militia in February; the other was sought out as a source of weapons in Anchorage, according to the documents.

Both confidential sources were compensated and will be compensated in the future, according to the documents. Both had been working with the FBI for about 10 months, but were not aware that the other source was working for the FBI.

The three new documents — each about 24 pages — are affidavits sworn by an FBI agent in support of search warrants on the property of Cox and co-defendant Coleman Barney. The search warrants were signed March 8.

Cox, Barney and fellow militia members Michael Anderson, Lonnie Vernon and his wife Karen Vernon were arrested March 10 and face more than 20 charges including conspiracy to commit murder. Barney’s wife, Rachel Barney, also has been charged with hindering prosecution for allegedly harboring Cox while he was a fugitive and has been issued a summons.

The sources are denoted CS-1 (Confidential Source One) and CS-2 in the documents.

CS-1 is described as a convicted felon who hoped to have a pending felony fraud charge reduced or dismissed through his cooperation with law enforcement. CS-2 has no criminal record, according to the documents.

Recordings made by CS-1 include a Feb. 12 meeting where Cox reportedly announced plan “241” (two for one) whereby militia members were told to respond to any attempt by law enforcement to execute an arrest warrant on Cox with twice the force — kidnapping two judges, Alaska State Troopers or district attorneys for every militia member arrested and killing two people if a militia member is killed in any potential conflict. Later, CS-1 recorded Cox pointing out the homes of two Alaska State Troopers on a map and gave him a piece of paper with the name of a trooper to add to the target list.

At a March 5 meeting, Cox reportedly made plans to sneak his family out of Alaska in a truck trailer and return to Alaska alone to “wage guerrilla warfare.”

The documents also describe a trip made by Lonnie Vernon and CS-1 to a statewide militia convention in Anchorage, Feb. 4 through 6. Cox canceled his own attendance at the conference because his wife was having a child, but he tasked Vernon and CS-1 with acquiring pineapple grenades and C4 explosive. State and federal prosecutors have not stated that Cox and his associates succeeded in acquiring C4, but it does accuse them of possessing illegal pineapple grenades, automatic weapons and gun silencers.

Neither Cox, Barney or the Vernons have had any firearms registered in their names in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Records database since 2005, according to the documents.

While in Anchorage, the Vernons and CS-1 reportedly met with CS-2 and an individual who identified himself as the “fuse king” in an effort to get silencers and make hand grenades functional.

Also during the trip, Vernon reportedly explained plans to kill federal Judge Ralph Beistline. The Vernons are in the middle of a court battle with the IRS over taxes, and could lose their house to pay more than $160,000 in back taxes, penalties and interest. The Vernons were representing themselves in the case and Beistline is presiding over their case. In recent cases he had expressed frustration with the Vernons for their “nonsensical” argument that the government does not have the authority to tax them.

Cox has his own history of challenging the government’s authority. When facing a misdemeanor charge of not notifying a police officer while carrying a concealed firearm, he also represented himself and once said he would treat a court date like an “invitation to a Tupperware party.” A warrant was issued for his arrest Feb. 14 after he did not appear at a jury trial on the misdemeanor weapons charge on that date.

Cox organized his own “common law” trial at the Fairbanks Denny’s Restaurant.

The common law court acquitted Cox of the weapons charge and a reckless endangerment charge Cox had pleaded guilty to in state court in March, 2010, according to the FBI affidavits.

Also described in the FBI affidavits is more information about weapons caches the militia reportedly had in the Fairbanks area.

One was on property rented out by Cox off Bradway Road in North Pole; another was on Chena Hot Springs Road, according to the document.

Militia members reportedly moved another cache from Barney’s house to the Fairbanks Ice Park the day of their arrests, while taking one of Barney’s children on a trip to the Ice Park.

Related articles

• “Federal agents recorded Shaeffer Cox and other militia members plotting to murder Alaska State Troopers and judges. Reading this will make your blood run cold.” and related posts (theimmoralminority.blogspot.com)
• Right Wing Terrorists Arrested in Plot to Murder Judge, State Troopers (littlegreenfootballs.com)
• Five More Lone Wolves in Alaska [Mike the Mad Biologist] (scienceblogs.com)
• “Five Alaska Militia Members Arrested in Plot to Murder Judge, State Troopers” and related posts (lawhawk.blogspot.com)