GERMAN police investigating a suspected arson attack at an asylum hostel in the port city of Luebeck yesterday released three young men they had been questioning about the attack.
The fire, which broke out in the early hours of Thursday, left 10 dead, including four children, and 20 seriously injured.
Rescue workers continued to search the rubble for one family which remains unaccounted for, while forensic experts looked for clues to the cause of the fire.
Hundreds of local people visited the burned out house yesterday, leaving flowers in memory of the victims, most of whom had fled to Germany from Africa and the Middle East following political persecution at home.
The three young men from the eastern state of Magdeburg were freed on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence to link them to the fire but police have not ruled out the possibility that the blaze was deliberate.
The premier of Schleswig Holstein, Ms Heide Simonis, yesterday offered a reward of DM50,000 (£21,550) to anyone who produced evidence pointing to the cause.
In a speech to the Bundestag yesterday, President Roman Herzog told Germans that they must never forget the past and should not underestimate the danger of a fascist resurgence.
"Guilt is always utterly personal, just like forgiveness. It is not inherited but future Germans have an especially great responsibility for the never again because many Germans were guilty in the past," he said.
There were 35 racially motivated, xenophobic or anti Semitic arson attacks in Germany last year, according to the Federal Criminal Bureau. There were almost 300 violent assaults and some 1,250 other crimes committed by extreme right wingers.
