By Andy Eckardt, NBC News

BERLIN – Irmela Mensah-Schramm has embarked on her very personal “combat mission” almost daily for 26 years. Her weapons? A scraper, nail-polish remover, a camera and lots of courage.

Come rain, heatwaves or stormy weather, the 66-year-old sets out to battle what she calls “extremely disturbing” neo-Nazi and racist graffiti, stickers and posters that blight the streets of Germany’s capital.

The retired special-needs teacher has now removed more than 90,000 stickers and scribblings.

“Even when I injured my leg several years ago and was walking on crutches, it did not stop me from removing the muck off traffic light poles, bus stops or building walls,” Mensah-Schramm says.

Mensah-Schramm travels by commuter train to areas she believes are right-wing strongholds, places where xenophobic propaganda and spray-painted Nazi symbols mix with gang-related graffiti and the more colorful works of spray-paint artists.

‘Appalled’
Her “vocation” started with a single neo-Nazi sticker on a street light outside of her apartment in the upmarket Berlin-Wannsee area.

“One morning, I saw a banned Nazi symbol well visible on a lamp post and was appalled that people in my neighborhood ignored it day in and day out, without removing this trash,” Mensah-Schramm recalls.

“Only a short while later, I witnessed an incident in which my Indian brother-in-law became the victim of racist bashing. This shocked me so much that I decided to act.”

John Macdougall / AFP – Getty Images file

Anti-Nazi activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm scrapes a sticker off a drainpipe in eastern Berlin’s Lichtenberg district on December 20.

She documents much of the offensive material in photographs and has compiled a scrapbook, which she always carries with her. Mensah-Schramm calls her project “Hate Destroys”.

“For many years, I have been displaying my pictures in exhibits across the country,” Mensah-Schramm says. “I talk about my experiences in schools and I regularly host workshops with children and students, generating awareness for the bad impact of these ugly racist messages.”

Swastikas
Even ill health hasn’t stopped her determined drive to wipe out extremist propaganda. After undergoing a cancer operation at a Berlin hospital in 1995, Mensah-Schramm found two swastikas painted in a stairwell. She rushed back to the nurses, asked for acetone and scrubbed away as much as she could before becoming too weak to finish the job. It was the first day Mensah-Schramm was able to get out of bed.

“In some journeys, I need to take tougher measures with black spray-paint or anti-graffiti solvent to remove writings off walls, and sometimes I even ask people on the street to help me out, if I cannot reach the graffiti,” Mensah-Schramm says as she walks past run-down apartment buildings in an economically depressed neighborhood in the Berlin suburb of Koenigs Wusterhausen, which was once part of communist East Germany.

“Look, that is my work,” she proudly points out, as she walks past a black square, which was once a swastika that she recently painted over.

Her message is clear: Don’t look away.

“You cannot achieve something by doing nothing,” explains Mensah-Schramm, whose husband was born in Ghana.

“This type of xenophobic propaganda on the streets can help to spread dangerous ideologies, which can be part of a radicalization process that ultimately can lead to extreme violence,” she says, referring to recent revelations about a neo-Nazi terror cell that shocked Germany and led to a nationwide debate about the danger of right-wing extremism in the country.

Murder spree
Two men, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt, and their 36-year old female accomplice, Beate Zschaepe, formed the so-called National Socialist Union (NSU). The group is believed to be responsible for the murders of at least nine small businessmen of Turkish and Greek origin between 2000 and 2006, as well as the slaying of a police officer in 2007.

Much to the embarrassment of German authorities, the country’s law enforcement agencies only connected the crimes and their xenophobic motives in late 2011 after two of the three cell members committed suicide, following a bank robbery that put police on their trail.

German investigators originally suspected that the victims were most likely killed by fellow immigrants and might have been involved in gang-related crimes.

While critics say that German authorities had turned “blind on the right eye”, by focusing instead on tackling Islamist terrorism, lawmakers set up an anti-terror center for right-wing extremism in December. Last month, Germany’s parliament also appointed a commission of inquiry into the series of killings.

The German government has also established a database aimed at better coordination in the fight against violent neo-Nazis, partly because the NSU terror cell apparently remained in the shadows for so long due to poor lines of communication between different national security agencies and state authorities.

“Attacks on local politicians and violent acts against foreigners show that the goal is to spread fear and terror,” Heinz Fromm, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, told a recent symposium in Berlin.

‘Brutality’
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency estimates that there are about 9,500 potentially violent neo-Nazis among the 26,000 right-wing extremists in the country.

“For years, we have been seeing that brutality within right-wing extremism has been on the rise,” says Dr. Alexander Eisvogel, vice-president of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

• Homes raided after neo-Nazi torchlight parade

However, Mensah-Schramm insists that she remains unafraid.

“I have been threatened many times by neo-Nazis, who have seen me remove their works,” she says. “And once, I came across big letters written on a wall that read: ‘Schramm, we will get you’.

“Another time, I found my photo illegally posted on a well-known neo-Nazi website, where the subtitle indicated that nobody would care if I was dead,” Mensah-Schramm describes.

She filed an official complaint over the violation of her personal rights. “Unfortunately, that got me nowhere because the server for the page was based in the United States,” Mensah-Schramm says.

Andy Eckardt, NBC News

This neo-Nazi sticker that reads “nationalism” in German is among the thousands that have been removed by Irmela Mensah-Schramm.

In fact, German authorities are facing a growing challenge when it comes to online enforcement.

Extremist groups are turning to web servers in the United States to host their content and spread their messages beyond the jurisdiction of local authorities. While displaying of Nazi symbols and the incitement of racial hatred are outlawed in Germany, neo-Nazi websites take advantage of free speech laws in the United States.

As the retiree counts sticker number 70,076, removed at a bus stop outside a local high school, she turns and says, “There are these small, but very rewarding moments.”

“A former neo-Nazi, who had massively threatened me in the past and later exited the scene, stopped me on the street one day,” Mensah-Schramm says with a choked voice. “He took off his sunglasses, looked me straight in the eyes and said that he wanted to thank me for never giving up my fight.

“I was so overwhelmed by the gesture that I started to cry,” Mensah-Schramm says, before walking off to complete her mission of the day.

Concerns that Israel will attack Iran in an attempt to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons have been escalating — particularly since it was reported that the U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said he believes there is a “strong likelihood” that Tel Aviv will launch an offensive sometime this spring.

As tensions continue to rise, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said during Friday prayers that Iran will help any nation or group that confronts the “cancer” Israel. He also said during his remarks that were broadcast on state TV that Iran country would continue its controversial nuclear program, and warned that any military strike by the U.S. would only make Iran stronger.

Ali Arouzi, NBC News Tehran Correspondent, responded to reader questions about the tension between the two nations earlier today. ?Click below to replay the chat.

Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP – Getty Images

Two of the organisers of the upcoming opposition rally “For Fair Elections,” anti-Kremlin blogger Alexei Navalny (R) and former chess champion Garry Kasparov (L), speak as they attend a meeting of the rally organisers in Moscow, on Jan. 31, 2012.

MOSCOW – By any standard, it was an impressive array of individuals. Seated under a large poster of a young Andrei Sakharov – the Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident, 1975 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and spiritual father of their movement – the brain trust of Moscow’s anti-Putin opposition sat at card tables debating their next move.  

The group was putting the finishing touches on the plan for this Saturday’s protest – an hour march through central Moscow and a short rally across the Moskva River from the Kremlin. It will be the third mass opposition demonstration in Moscow since the December 4 parliamentary polls that were widely criticized for voter fraud in favor of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s party.  

Six weeks ago, more than 100,000 protesters took to the streets to vent their anger with the corruption and stagnation of the Putin regime. But since then, the end-of-year Russian holidays, followed by a Siberian cold snap with record-breaking temperatures, has undeniably sapped the protest movement’s energy. The organizers collective fatigue was palpable.

Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion, led the meeting. Not because he’s so smart he almost beat a super computer at chess, but because his countless arrests and beatings at the hands of Russian riot police had earned him the mantle. Seated beside him were the two young stars of the new generation of Russian dissidents, the right-of-center blogger Alexei Navalny and socialist activist Sergei Udaltsov. 

Str / AFP – Getty Images

Opposition activists hang their banner reading: “Putin, go!” atop a bulding’s roof, just over the Moskva River river from the Kremlin (foreground) in Moscow, on Feb. 1.

Both men, in their 30’s, had recently spent weeks in jail on charges of organizing illegal protests. Now they were subdued, speaking occasionally, but more often just listening, scrolling through their iPhone messages or tweeting.

Opposite Kasparov, sat Vladimir Ryzhkov.  He too had paid his dues. Once the youngest MP elected to Boris Yeltsin’s parliament at age 27, Ryzhkov, broad-minded and articulate, was seen rather differently by Putin’s Kremlin. The “dangerous” reformer has effectively been ostracized from mainstream politics. 

“No doubt the Russian Winter is not as inviting as the Arab Spring,” Kasparov quipped. “But I would say that 30, 40 or 50,000 in this weather will send a message across the river to the Kremlin.”

But what message will that be? Putin’s propaganda machine will likely jump on any smaller turn-out, proving, they will no doubt say, that the protest is petering out.

By the end of their two hour meeting the protest organizers were clearly divided over what to do next to regain some momentum.

Navalny argued that the mass protests of December needed to grow bigger and more frequent to pressure the Kremlin. But author Boris Akunin argued that the days of the big protests were over. They were too costly, too time-consuming, and had already peaked. It was time, he said, to focus on smaller, flash mob-generated actions.

Misha Japaridze / AP

Russian opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov shows a V sign after he was released from a detention center in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2012. Udaltsov, whose jailing became a rallying point for the Russian opposition, has been freed after a month in custody.

Indeed, across Moscow, such “attacks” are growing in number. On any given day, small groups of protesters walk out of the city’s many subway stations, their mouths covered with strips of masking tape, on which is written “We Have No Voice.” They’re arrested almost as soon as they walk into the street. They also have tried cyber-attacks on the Kremlin’s Internet. Within hours of the launch of Putin’s own website, it was jammed by thousands of emails calling on him to resign.

And in arguably the most startling “protest,” several activists managed to hang a giant banner on the top of a building directly opposite the Kremlin for all to see. Painted on the banner, both Putin’s likeness covered by a huge “X,” and beneath it, the words, “Go Away!” in Russian. Amazingly it took an hour for the police to spot it and tear it down. But, while often hilarious, none of these flash mob tactics are likely to keep Putin from winning a six-year term in the March 4 presidential elections.

Kremlin’s photo-doctoring backfires big time

Putin himself seems to have come to that conclusion. Creating massive traffic jams in central Moscow today as his convoy skidded over the icy snow from one campaign stop to another, he’s got his swagger back. His camp believes the protest movement is too divided to coalesce around one opposition candidate. And, besides, the other official candidates – Communist Gennady Zyuganov, Nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Social Democrat Sergei Mironov and billionaire owner of the New Jersey Nets Mikhail Prokhorov – are all Kremlin-approved because they pose no real threat.

Andrey Smirnov / AFP – Getty Images

A police officer braves the cold as he detains a demonstrator wearing a carnival costume of death who tried to take part in an unauthorized stage protest just outside the Interior Ministry headquarters in Moscow on Friday. The sign on the protester’s chest says “Corruption.”

So what happens to the movement if Putin wins? Ryzhkov painted a dark picture: “There will be mass protests starting March 5th,” he said in his Moscow home and office following the meeting. “And then we stay in the streets until reforms start and Putin promises new legislative and presidential elections.”
 
“You mean Tent Cities,” I asked?

“Yes,” he replied. “Like the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.”

And what if Putin doesn’t reform, but instead cracks down?

“Unfortunately Putin is a dangerous man. He can start some violence like [Syria’s] Bashar al-Assad or [Libya’s] Moammar Ghadafi. But I hope that if he sees a half million people in the streets, he will start reforms instead of violence.”

Many middle-class, well-educated Russians are calling the protests a turning point. But is it the beginning of the end of Putin’s political career? Or rather the beginning of an unprecedented second 12-year run of power for the only real leader Russians have known this century?

The answer is blowing in a bone-chilling, Siberian wind.

Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London who has covered Russia and the former Soviet Union since the 1980’s.