Berlin Police Cadets Have Trouble with German Language, Says Academy Head

The New Normal - Illiterate, Muslim Police in Germany

© Global Look Press / Paul Zinken

Germany’s cops were bombarded with countless criticisms today, but this one definitely stands out – it emerged that police cadets in Berlin, many of whom have immigrant backgrounds, have difficulty using… the German language.

Many cadets attending Berlin’s police academy have “fundamental difficulties” writing in German without spelling or punctuation errors, revealed Tanja Knapp, the newly appointed head of the institution. She said it was really disappointing to learn that these cadets are unable to produce written texts. And since after every stakeout or chase you have to write a report, that’s discouraging news.

Part of the problem is that too much emphasis is placed on learning English, Knapp said. Over the years, Berlin has evolved into a truly international city where English is sometimes spoken more frequently than German.

“Of course, it makes sense to be able to speak English to the capital’s many tourists,” Knapp said. “But if the basic required level of German is too low, then the focus should be on German.”

Some politicians, including Jens Spahn, a potential successor to Angela Merkel as leader of the Christian Democrats, have previously spewed vitriol about English being spoken on Berlin streets. Spahn, the current health minister, once labeled Berliners who communicate in English “provincial dwarfs.” He claimed there is another parallel society in the German capital, namely “young people from around the world who keep to themselves.”

Around 2,500 future cops receive training at the academy, and roughly 40 percent of them come from immigrant families, according to Die Welt. Literacy levels vary greatly among the cadets, and it “is not so easy to compensate for this during their study time,” the academy head admitted.

Knapp took over as the academy head in July this year. Notably, falling German skills and poor discipline among recruits led to the previous officer-in-command being removed from the position.

Nearly 80 Children Kidnapped in Cameroon’s English-Speaking Separatist Region

Always the children paying the price for man's madness

Anti-government protesters in Bamenda © Reuters

Dozens of people, most of them children, have been kidnapped from a school in the city of Bamenda in Cameroon’s northwestern Anglophone region, which is struggling with a separatist insurgency.

Armed men kidnapped 78 students from a Presbyterian school in the Nkwen village, Northwest Region Governor Deben Tchoffo said.

A video uploaded to social media showed the kidnapped children and the alleged kidnappers, calling themselves “Amba boys” in reference to the breakaway Ambazonia state that the separatists have been trying to create. The footage could not be immediately verified, but parents have reportedly been reacting to images of their children on social media, according to AP.

Earlier, a military source told Reuters that the school principal has been kidnapped along with the students.

“In total, 81 people were kidnapped including the principal. They were taken to the bush,” the source said.

The separatists, who are protesting against President Paul Biya’s French-speaking government, have imposed strict curfews, shuttered schools, and killed government soldiers and policemen in guerilla raids.

The conflict between the insurgents and government security forces intensified last year after a government crackdown on peaceful protesters. The fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people, with many fleeing Bamenda for the calmer Francophone regions.

In July, a video showing government soldiers shooting women and children sparked outrage and accusations that the Cameroon government – a close ally of the US in Africa – was carrying out arbitrary executions of anyone believed to be supporting the Boko Haram terrorist group.

In an October presidential election, opposition candidate Maurice Kamto declared victory against Biya, who has ruled since 1982, but Biya’s ruling party dismissed claims of defeat and accused Kamto of breaking the law. Reuters reported that the opposing candidate did not provide evidence to back up claims that he won.

A government spokesperson said it was keeping track of developments surrounding the kidnapping, but provided no other details.

Cameroon is about 70% Christian and about 18% Muslim with a number of people practicing traditional religions. Cameroon has Nigeria on one side, Central African Republic and Congo on the other side, all of which are war-torn countries.

Muslim Judge Overrules Muslim Council in London

Judge rules child must leave Muslim foster home

Andrew Norfolk, Chief Investigative Reporter
The Times

The girl had been placed with a family who she said often did not speak English at home and encouraged her to learn Arabic

A girl at the centre of a care dispute was removed from her Muslim foster parents yesterday and reunited with her family as a judge urged councils to seek “culturally matched placements” for vulnerable children.

The five-year-old, a native English speaker from a Christian family, was taken to her grandmother’s home after a court ruled that she should not remain in the placement organised by the London borough of Tower Hamlets.

Judge Khatun Sapnara, a practising Muslim, said it was in the girl’s best interests to live with a family member who could keep her safe, promote her welfare and meet her needs “in terms of ethnicity, culture and religion”. The judge ordered the council to conduct an urgent investigation into the issue.

Tower Hamlets - I'm guessing that's Canary Wharf in the background

The girl will be sent to live with her grandmother following the court ruling. 

The child, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was allegedly placed into foster care by social workers in the east London borough of Tower Hamlets. 

Sent to live with two Muslim families in six months, one family allegedly suggested she should remove her necklace bearing a cross and learn Arabic, The Times reported.  

Confidential local authority reports on the case seen by the newspaper alleged the girl was “very distressed” and had begged not to return to the family as “they don’t speak English”.

Local authorities are required to consider a child’s religion, racial origin, and cultural and linguistic background when placing within foster care.

The London borough of Tower Hamlets claimed there were "inaccuracies" in the reporting of the story.

It said the girl had been fostered in a temporary placement with an English speaking family of mixed race.

Tower Hamlets, London

FBI Director Accuses Poland and Hungary of Helping With the Holocaust

FBI director's article stirred up a strong reaction. One reaction by a Washington Post columnist and the wife of the Speaker of the Polish Parliament, Anne Applebaum, follows this brief article.

FBI director James Comey

Poland has summoned the US ambassador and demanded an apology over comments on the Holocaust by FBI director James Comey.

The foreign ministry said Mr Comey had suggested in a Washington Post article that some Poles were accomplices.

That's not actually correct. What he said, (below in blue) was that there were murderers and accomplices of Germany, Poland and Hungary. Consequently, he's accusing Poland and Hungary of being as guilty as Germany. What do you think? Does the Director need history lessons or English lessons?

After the summons US envoy Stephen Mull said he made it clear the US believed "Nazi Germany alone" was responsible.

Six million Polish citizens were killed by the Nazis during World War Two, half of them Jewish.
'Falsification of history'

In the Washington Post article on Thursday, aimed at raising education about the Holocaust, Mr Comey wrote: "In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn't do something evil.

"They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do."

The words sparked a storm of protest in Poland.

President Bronislaw Komorowski told Polish television the comments were an "insult to thousands of Poles who helped Jews".

Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz said: "To those who are incapable of presenting the historic truth in an honest way, I want to say that Poland was not a perpetrator but a victim of World War Two. I would expect full historical knowledge from officials who speak on the matter."

Ambassador Mull, who on Sunday attended ceremonies marking the 72nd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis, said in a statement he had written to Mr Comey "protesting the falsification of history, especially... accusing Poles of perpetuating crimes which not only they did not commit, but which they themselves were victims of."

After Sunday's summons he added: "I made clear that the opinion that Poland is in any way responsible for the Holocaust is not the position of the United States.

"Nazi Germany alone bears responsibility. I now have a lot of work before me to make things right in this situation."

Anne Applebaum
Washington Post

Response 
Anne Applebaum
Washington Post
The Polish ambassador to Washington has protested, the Polish president has protested, the speaker of the Polish parliament (to whom I am married) has protested — and the U.S. ambassador to Warsaw has apologized profusely. Why? Because James Comey, the director of the FBI, in a speech that was reprinted in The Post arguing for more Holocaust education, demonstrated just how badly he needs it himself.

In two poorly worded sentences, he sounded to Polish readers as if he were repeating the World War II myth that most drives them crazy: Namely, that somehow, those who lived in occupied Eastern Europe shared full responsibility for a German policy. Comey put it like this:

“In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil. They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do.”

There are a number of problems with that pair of weak sentences, starting with the vast difference between Germany and the rest. During the war, Germany had a state policy of exterminating the Jews. This policy involved not “accomplices” but hundreds of bureaucrats, tens of thousands of soldiers, train schedules and plans. Germany also encouraged the creation of collaborationist governments in other countries – Vichy France, for example – some of which used their own police officers to send their Jewish citizens into the German death camps.

Germany also occupied Poland, but there was no Polish “Vichy.” During the war, there was no Polish state at all. Indeed, it was the absence of the Polish state that enabled the Germans to create a lawless, violent world, one in which anyone could be arbitrarily murdered, any Jew could be deported — and any Pole who helped a Jew could be shot instantly, along with his entire family. Many were. Millions of others died too – Polish intellectuals, priests and politicians were all Nazi targets.

In the course of the war, most of Poland’s infrastructure, industry and architecture were destroyed. In that atmosphere, many people were frightened by or indifferent to the fate of the Jews, and some murdered in order to avoid being murdered. But that doesn’t mean that “in their minds” they “didn’t do something evil.”

Although the circumstances were different, Germany’s leading role is equally clear in Hungary. The wartime government of Adm. Miklós Horthy did pass anti-Semitic legislation and did align itself with the Nazis. But the mass murder and deportation of the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz began only in March 1944, when that government dissolved and was replaced with a straightforward German occupation. Once the Hungarian state had been dissolved, in other words, Hungary also became a lawless, violent zone where anything was possible.

So no, it is not true, as Comey made it sound, that “murderers and accomplices” in Germany, Poland and Hungary and lots of other places were somehow responsible for the Holocaust. And no, it isn’t true that the Holocaust is a story of so many otherwise “good” people who “convinced themselves it was the right thing to do.”

On the contrary, it’s a story about the power of fear, the danger of lawlessness and the horror that was made possible by a specific form of German state terror in the years between 1939 and 1945 – a terror that convinced many people to do things that they knew were terribly, terribly wrong. If the FBI director wants to take some lessons from Washington’s excellent Holocaust museum, that’s very admirable. But first he should make sure he’s understood what he’s seen.

Anne Applebaum writes a biweekly foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. She is also the Director of the Global Transitions Program at the Legatum Institute in London.