“I wouldn’t go to an open-air swimming pool with my three grandchildren” – says the head of all lifeguards in Germany, the President of the Association of Lifeguards, Peter Harzheim.
After the shocking brawl in an open-air swimming pool in Berlin last weekend, the President of the Association of Lifeguards, Peter Harzheim, has now commented in the newspaper “Bildzeitung” on the transformation of our open-air swimming pools into no-go areas.
Harzheim, who has been a lifeguard for almost half a century, says quite openly that he cannot recommend families to go to the open-air swimming pool on weekends at the moment. He has “three small grandchildren myself – if I went in there with them, I would simply be acting irresponsibly!”
With regard to the numerous thugs with a migration background shown on the video, which reproduces part of the brawl at the Berlin Insulaner open-air swimming pool, Harzheim judges: “When I see that, I dread to see these people. These people I see there have no respect for other people. This can’t go on like this.”
The head of the German police union, Rainer Wendt, who has recently been rather concerned with appeasing the government, expressed a similar opinion and accused the politicians of refusing to make clear statements about the background of the perpetrators:
“Politicians are shying away from the debate about these young men, most of them with a migration background.”
The baths should therefore better screen their audience, demands the president of the Association of Lifeguards. What that might look like in concrete terms is difficult to answer, of course… Here, a huge stress with politics and the current judiciary is pre-programmed.
But even these authorities do not seem to be in Harzheim’s favour: “It is not acceptable that people who commit crimes there are released after two hours. (…). Politics is turning a blind eye to the problems and leaving us in the lurch.”
And another comment from my side: It also seems doubtful whether the push by neo-feminist politics to allow women to appear “topless” in swimming pools and at bathing lakes is an effective remedy. The weekly Swiss newspaper “Weltwoche” even ran the headline: “Topless in open-air swimming pools? Yes, please! There is no better way to demonstrate that unconditional immigration and Western openness do not work.