I looked at the board again to see which platform the local train would arrive at and walked to that platform. I saw a train arriving with a good number of German policemen standing at the head of the platform. I noticed that these policemen -- all young men dressed in military green uniforms -- were all well in excess of six feet tall. All looked to be in superb physical shape. All were holding a riot shield in front of them.
Then I saw why the large policemen were there. A number of neo-Nazis, dressed in black t-shirts, were walking from the train. None of them were a match for the policemen, as they were generally not tall and not in good physical shape. They walked to another platform, the one where my local train was scheduled to arrive soon. Great.
I realized that the express train had probably been rerouted to avoid them, with my poor German preventing me from understanding the public address message which would have explained what happened to the train.
I entered the train as it arrived, trying to avoid the mass of neo-Nazis. The train was just about to depart when another gang of them entered the train car I was in, with them sitting upstairs in first class seating.
During the relatively short train ride to Halle, the smoke from their cigarettes spread throughout the car, even though all trains are non-smoking. An occasional clink of glass could be heard as their alcohol bottles were dropped onto the floor. When we arrived, the same group of large policemen was there to prevent them from causing trouble.'
As I walked around the Halle station, I realized that many neo-Nazi groups were traveling north, as the station was full of them. They all walked to the platform of the same train I wanted to take, followed by the group of large policemen. Enough, I said to myself. I walked to the ticket office and asked the agent where the neo-Nazis were going. She almost spat out, "Magdeburg," which was the next major city after Köthen, meaning I would be forced to share the train with the neo-Nazis for some time. I asked her for the time and platform of the next train back to Leipzig. I would visit another city that day.
* * * * *
Perhaps the largest trigger for Middle Eastern, African, and other refugees traveling to Germany in 2015 was German Chancellor Angela Merkel's infamous comment that "We can do it!" referring to the fanciful belief that Germany could accommodate a very large number of them with no planning. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees tweeted, "We are at present largely no longer enforcing Dublin procedures -- refugees must claim asylum in the first EU state they enter -- for Syrian citizens," meaning that border, passport, and security controls were abandoned. One refugee arrived with a photo of Merkel proving that she was largely responsible for large numbers of refugees entering the country. But now that the number has already exceeded one million, some are changing their tune. Bavarian governor Horst Seehofer said that if arrivals continue at the pace they did in December, "we would have this year ... more refugees than in the whole of 2015."
The riot at Cologne's train station on New Year's Eve was predictable and much worse than wildings which have occurred in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
Most of the 1000 young men who became a lawless mob in and near the Cologne train station were "Arab and North African-looking" men. They groped and sexually assaulted women trying to use the train station, often trying to pull them into cars to be raped later. They fired fireworks into the crowd and even shoved fireworks into the hoodies of people walking by. No one was spared, with a volunteer policewoman being just one of the victims.
The attacks may have been organized in advance, though there is disagreement regarding that. Some media outlets are trying to blame it on organized crime to shift the blame from Muslims to common criminals, but given the fact that it's never happened before, organized crime must have been taken over by recent Muslim immigrants. Since sexual attacks also happened in Finland, Switzerland, and Austria, it's more likely that the refugees are out of control and need to be returned to their native countries.
One man was quoted as saying: "I'm a Syrian! You have to treat me kindly! Mrs. Merkel invited me."
Similar incidents occurred in Hamburg and Stuttgart, with authorities slow to react due to political correctness. The events echo those in Cairo when CBS News correspondent Lara Logan was raped by a wilding gang of young men.
In contrast to my experience in Eastern Germany, there were no large policemen dressed in riot gear to protect Germans and foreigners. The regular police officers on the scene were "bombarded with fireworks and pelted with glass bottles." The official report of the incident noted: "Women, accompanied or not, literally ran a 'gauntlet' through masses of heavily intoxicated men that words cannot describe." Groups of male migrants were repeatedly named as perpetrators. Officers were hindered from pushing their way through to people calling for help by tight clusters of men. The report author stated that the actions of the police officers were met with a level of disrespect "like I have never experienced in my 29 years of public service."
A number of people were detained who had "only been in Germany for a few weeks." One police officer stated that "of these people, 14 were from Syria and one was from Afghanistan."
One investigator told the Kölner Express: "The female victims were so badly pushed about, they had heavy bruises on their breasts and behinds."
Cologne mayor Henriette Reker declared that women can protect themselves from men on the streets by keeping them more than an arm’s length away, blaming the victim, not to mention being completely ignorant of the "tight clusters of men."
Back in September, Syrians, Albanians, and Iraqis had shouted "Germany, Germany!" and "Merkel! Merkel!" at a train station in Budapest. After viewing the footage, perhaps Merkel remembered the shouts of East Germans shouting "Gorby, Gorby!" and "Gorby, help us! Gorby, save us!" when Mikhail Gorbachev visited East Berlin in October 1989 for the 40th anniversary of the founding of the DDR. She confused the shouts of Germans desperate for a decent life with savages who cannot comprehend the civilized West.
Gorbachev played the role of the asteroid in the Chicxulub impact with respect to communist dinosaurs because just one month later, the Berlin Wall fell, and two years later, the Soviet Union imploded. It appears that Merkel is playing the same role with respect to Western civilization in Europe.