They found a nice place to throw a weekend party and celebrated with beer, hot dogs and loud music.
Never mind that the party was at the memorial site of the former concentration camp of Neuengamme, near Hamburg, where 50,000 people from all over Europe were systematically murdered.
The celebrants were 28 members of volunteer fire brigades from the federal states of Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony. They had gathered at the site last weekend, celebrating the end of a sports competition.
Their boss, Hamburg Fire Brigade Chief Hermann Jonas, was not invited. He was made aware of the event after the weekend.
“It was extremely insensible,” he said. “We will make sure that something like this will not reoccur.”
The local authorities, however, gave the group permission to hold the event.
Later, these officials said they were misled.
Tim Schleider, spokesman for the culture department in the city of Hamburg, said the firefighters had told the city that they wanted to end the day of activities with a lecture in the memorial center on Germany’s past.
“We had no word of celebrations, a beer wagon and music. We would not have allowed it,” he said.
Meanwhile, at the site of another former concentration camp, Sachsenhausen, located near Berlin, work began last week on the reconstruction of two barracks that were torched in September 1992.
Barracks 38 and 39 had served in recent years as a Jewish museum.
At the time, two skinheads stood trial on arson charges in connection with the incident, but were acquitted.
As the result of a government order, the two suspects will face a retrial in a few weeks.
The reconstruction work began with a ceremony at the site.
Ignatz Bubis, chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and Steffen Reiche, minister of culture of the federal state of Brandenburg, symbolically laid down the first mounds of cement.
Bubis complained in his speech that the attack has not yet been resolved.
He noted that the number of attacks in Germany that were motivated by hatred for foreigners has risen, though damage has decreased.
Reiche said that the timing for beginning the reconstruction was important, because it came on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camp on April 23, 1945.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
