The head of police in Germany’s capital condemned a number of officers on Monday after images emerged of them doing push-ups on the blocks that make up the Holocaust memorial.
The Berliner Zeitung newspaper published photos of officers in uniform and carrying weapons using the memorial’s concrete blocks as supports for exercise.
“The behavior of the colleagues disregards what this very memorial stands for and does not correspond to the respect that must be shown to it and that is shown to it by the Berlin police,” Chief Barbara Slowik said.
“For me, it also violates the memory of those who were murdered,” Slowik added.
A place of remembrance
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe consists of 2,711 grey blocks of different sizes, located in central Berlin, close to the Brandenburg Gate.
While tourists often use the site to take selfies, run around, or even for sunbathing and picnicking, the rules forbid running, making noise, smoking and other acts that could be seen as disrespectful for the place of remembrance.
The photos displayed by the Berliner Zeitung appeared to be stills from videos taken by the officers themselves.
The event took place during a protest action in the capital in June for which the police were deployed.
Police union calls for ‘consequences’
Slowik said she would open an internal investigation into the incident and also stressed that she would highlight the role of the memorial as “a place of remembrance and commemoration.”
Germany’s police trade union, GdP, also apologized for the “tasteless” actions, calling for “consequences.”
“The Holocaust memorial is not an adventure playground. This inexplicable action mocks the genocide of millions of people and tramples on the values that our Berlin police,” the GdP added.
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Victims and heroes: War memorials in Berlin
The Neue Wache
Since 1993, the Neue Wache (New Guardhouse) has been Germany’s central memorial site for the victims of war and tyranny. It was built at the beginning of the 19th century according to designs by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and has always been a memorial site. First for the Napoleonic Wars of Liberation 1813 -1815, later for the fallen of the First and Second World Wars.
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Victims and heroes: War memorials in Berlin
Pieta by Käte Kollwitz
A mother embraces her dead son: This sculpture by Käthe Kollwitz is the centerpiece in the Neue Wache. On Sunday, to mark the National Day of Mourning, the British heir to the throne, Prince Charles, will lay wreaths here together with Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and other representatives.
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Victims and heroes: War memorials in Berlin
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
In the German capital, there are numerous memorials for the victims of the Nazi regime. The most famous and largest one is the Holocaust Memorial near Brandenburg Gate. An wave-shaped field of 2,711 stelae commemorates the more than 6 million murdered Jews in Europe.
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Victims and heroes: War memorials in Berlin
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe murdered during the Nazi era
A water basin, symbolically filled with tears. The names of concentration camps are inscribed on the stone slabs around it. The monument in Berlin’s Tiergarten commemorates 500,000 people who were persecuted and murdered as “gypsies” by the Nazis in Germany and other European countries between 1933 and 1945.
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Victims and heroes: War memorials in Berlin
Memorial to the German Resistance
The war almost ended a year earlier: On June 20, 1944, a group of German officers led by Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg tried to overthrow Hitler. But the assassination attempt failed and the officers involved were executed. The German Resistance Memorial Center remembers those who died while resisting the Nazi regime.
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Victims and heroes: War memorials in Berlin
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on Breitscheidplatz was severely damaged in bombing raids in 1943. When it was to be completely demolished and rebuilt in the postwar years, the people of Berlin protested. Thus the 71-meter-high (233 ft) tower ruin was preserved as a memorial against war and destruction, for peace and reconciliation, visible from afar.
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Victims and heroes: War memorials in Berlin
Topography of Terror
With about one million visitors annually, the documentation center Topography of Terror on Niederkirchnerstrasse is one of the most visited memorial sites in Berlin. From 1933 to 1945, this was the site of the headquarters of the Secret State Police Office and the SS — in other words, where the Nazi regime’s system of terror was planned and managed.
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Victims and heroes: War memorials in Berlin
The Soviet War Memorial
A Soviet soldier holding a rescued child on his arm and a lowered sword over a shattered swastika — this huge monument towers above the Soviet Memorial in Treptow. The military cemetery is the final resting place for 7,000 Soviet soldiers who lost their lives in the fight for Berlin in the spring of 1945.
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Victims and heroes: War memorials in Berlin
Commonwealth War Cemetery in Berlin
Some 3,600 Air Force soldiers, mainly killed in air combat over Berlin, are buried in the British cemetery on Heerstrasse. The honorary cemetery was built between 1955 and 1957 for the fallen soldiers from Great Britain and the Commonwealth States, especially Canada. It is still under special protection by the British Crown.
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Victims and heroes: War memorials in Berlin
Monument to the Polish liberators of Berlin
For a long time there was no place in Berlin to remember the Polish victims of war and German occupation. But in September this memorial plaque was unveiled in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg in honor of the Polish troops who took part in the Battle of Berlin in 1945. And in October, the Bundestag passed a resolution to erect a memorial to the six million Polish victims of the Nazi regime.
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Victims and heroes: War memorials in Berlin
New documentation center to be created
Also in October, the German Bundestag decided to establish a new documentation center on the Nazi occupation in Europe. It is to be dedicated to all victims of the German war of extermination and Nazi occupation and will focus on groups of victims that have received little attention up to now. Further details about the place and schedule of the implementation are not yet known.
Author: Kerstin Schmidt
ab/sms (dpa, AP)
Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-police-apologize-for-push-ups-on-holocaust-memorial/a-59687497?maca=en-rss-en-ger-1023-xml-atom