BERLIN (JTA) — In the wake of New Year’s revelers desecrating Germany’s Holocaust memorial in Berlin, memorial officials and police plan to meet on ramping up security measures.
Reacting to a video of young party-goers shooting fireworks and urinating among the 2711 steles of the memorial last week, spokeswoman Jenifer Stolz told JTA that “we are all quite appalled. But it is not the first time.”
Meetings with Berlin police are planned in the coming days and weeks to discuss measures to prevent such behavior. They include temporary fencing similar to Berlin’s central park, the Tiergarten.
Berlin’s major open-air New Year’s event takes place near the Brandenburg Gate, and hundreds of thousands of visitors walk past the memorial on the way, Stolz said.
“It seems to invite them to such excesses, and it’s not nice,” she said.
Stolz said the site cleanup went quickly and that all fireworks detritus was cleared away by 2 p.m. on New Year’s Day.
