Berlin’s police chief has ordered an investigation after an anti-Semitic incident at a Berlin police academy has unsettled officials.
In the presence of an 83-year-old Holocaust survivor, an entire class of young police trainees responded to a compulsory class on the Nazi era by saying that they didn’t want to be constantly reminded of the Holocaust; they also said that Jews were known to be wealthy, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported Tuesday.
The incident happened on Feb. 27, and only by coincidence became known to Berlin’s police chief Dieter Glietsch, the newspaper said.
Glietsch immediately launched an investigation and vowed that if the stories were true, “this will have consequences.”
Classes on Germany’s Nazi past and on xenophobia are part of the curricula of police and military schools in Germany; the classes are mandatory and regularly feature eyewitness accounts from survivors.
One such account was given to the class by 83-year-old Holocaust survivor Isaak Behar, who lost his parents and two sisters in Auschwitz, and for the past two decades has spoken before German police and military trainees. Behar told the daily Berliner Zeitung that he witnessed the anti-Semitic incident, but was not willing to further elaborate on what happened that day.
“I am satisfied with the way the school’s teachers and director responded, and in particular by the police president’s reaction,” he told the newspaper.
Source: United Press International
Date: 19/03/07
Posted: 22/03/07
