German President Christian Wulff on Wednesday condemned the murders of several small business owners with Turkish and Greek backgrounds as he accepted the highest award from Germany's principle Jewish organization.

"People in our country, among us, were made victims of deadly hate and right-wing violence," Wulff said in Berlin as he received the Leo Baeck Award from the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

The award honors Wulff's relationship with Israel and the Jewish community in Germany. This January he visited the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz to commemorate the 66th anniversary of its liberation, and one year ago he visited Israel just months after taking office.

Christian Wulff during his visit to the former Auschwitz death camp

Justice served?

Wulff said he would be hosting a memorial service for the 10 people thought to have been killed by a secret neo-Nazi cell since 2000. The scandal, uncovered only recently, has shocked Germany and raised questions of why it took so long for authorities to make the connection to right-wing extremists.

"Has our country given justice to the victims and their families?" Wulff asked in his acceptance speech, directly questioning the country's authorities. "Must we have assumed a connection to right-wing extremists, and were the culprits sufficiently monitored? ... Have we possibly allowed ourselves to be misguided by prejudice?"

The string of murders was uncovered only recently

Crass assessment in press

Wulff added that Germany could not ignore the victims' families, and that the country has profited from its openness to the world.

"This is something we are going to continue to develop and defend against all threats and fears of all things different," he said.

The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann, echoed Wulff's remarks on the murders and criticized the tabloid press's use of the phrase "döner murder," which refers to the Turkish dish popular in Germany. Most of the murder victims were of Turkish or Greek origin and operated restaurant stands.

Graumann called on Germans to offer greater societal empathy to the victims.

Author: Marcel Fürstenau, Berlin / acb

Editor: Andreas Illmer