On New Year’s Eve there were simultaneous attacks on women by large groups of “southern-looking” men in at least seven major German cities. Most of the news stories have been about Cologne, but similar events occurred n Stuttgart, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and other cities. The modus operandi was the same everywhere: massive numbers of young Middle Eastern or North African men, gathering suddenly as if it had been planned in advance, and harassing, robbing, groping, molesting, and even raping young women who were out for the evening’s celebrations.
A similar situation was reported in Helsinki, but the Finnish authorities were tipped in advance and managed to avoid the worst by arresting the ringleaders.
Now we learn that the Groping Jihad also came to Austria. The following account from OE24.at: describes the events between Christmas and New Year’s in Salzburg and Vienna. Many thanks to Nash Montana for the translation:
Sex-Mob also rampaged in Austria
Germany is in a state of shock. Now in Austria as well victims are breaking their silence.
“One guy took my friend in a choke hold. He kissed her and licked her face.” Sabrina S. (name changed) is still in shock (see interview below). On December 26th she and her friends went to visit a new club in the historic district of Salzburg. On their way home the young women were attacked at around 2 am by a gang of ten to fifteen foreign young men.
Warning on Facebook
The friends sent off a warning via Facebook. “To all girls. Please be very careful, if you’re walking in girl groups or alone in the Salzburg historic district.” The friends didn’t report the incident. “We just were not aware of the bigger picture and greater scope of this attack.”
Robert Holzleitner from the office of the district attorney Salzburg, confirmed: “There are many reports because of sexual attacks.” He did not disclose any detailed numbers.
The Salzburg Police has knowledge of incidents like the one Sabrina S. has experienced. Why are these incidents not reported by the victims? “Those are sex crimes. The protection of victims is very important,” says the police spokesperson Valerie Hillebrand. That there is political pressure to conceal sex crimes committed by young foreigners is not the case.
Vienna: Another sex-mob riot
Vienna was also affected. One reader reported of incidents on the Calafati Plaza on Silvester night [New Year’s Eve]: Young women were groped, harassed and molested by foreign men. According to the police, there have been no reports filed.
In Cologne over 100 reports have been made by victims so far. Yesterday the first three offenders were arrested. Germany is in a state of shock after the attacks were first ignored by the media. The ZDF admitted that it was a mistake not to report about this topic from the get-go.
Victim Sabrina S.: “We were completely at the mercy of these men”
ÖSTERREICH: What happened that night?
Sabrina: We were on our way from the Griesgasse headed to the Staatsbrücke, when about 15 meters ahead of us, a group of men started to scream and began to walk towards us. Everything went so fast, and we didn’t have any time to react. But we instinctively realized that they were going to cross a red line.
ÖSTERREICH: Were you hurt?
Sabrina: I wasn’t; I was all the way in the front. But my two friends were held down by the men. They still tried to force the men to leave them alone, but it was to no avail. They were overpowered. One of my friends then was taken into a choke hold; her face disappeared in his jacket. He then started to forcibly kiss her and he licked her face up and down. She said that at that point she didn’t have any strength left to try and free herself, she was completely at his mercy.
ÖSTERREICH: How did you manage to help them?
Sabrina: I walked towards them and I took the hand of the guy who had my friend in the chokehold, and I just grabbed his hand and pushed it away. She then managed to punch him with her fist right between his legs. But everything went so fast. And our other friend was also being held, though hey didn’t touch her as close as that.
ÖSTERREICH: Did you call the police?
Sabrina: No, because we just weren’t aware of the full scope of this incident. And we were really shook up. But once we published the whole thing on Facebook, that’s when we finally started to realize that this was a much larger problem, and that so many more girls and women were affected by these attacks and went through similar experiences. Many wrote me that they too had been harassed and molested at the same spot, or by the train station or by the Makartsteg. One girl told me that during the Silvester night she nearly got dragged away by a gang of men in front of the town hall. But some people who were passing by helped her free herself. And anyway, we can’t even give a description of the offenders.
Germany, Austria, Sweden…New Years eve migrant chaos extended to Finland as well….Orpo disappointed by police chief’s street patrol comments Finnish Minister of the Interior Petteri Orpo said he was disappointed by statements made by the head of police about the establishment of citizen street patrols across the country. Orpo said that the police commissioner’s statements should have more heavily emphasised that the police are responsible for law enforcement, not private citizens. On Tuesday National Police Commissioner Seppo Kolehmainen commented on the growth of street patrols, stating that the volunteer forces are a welcome development.
The patrols are chiefly organised by right-wing groups like the Soldiers of Odin, which have grown since the influx of asylum seekers from war-torn areas in the Middle East and Africa began last summer.
Interior Minister says he’s satisfied with police action on New Year’s Eve
Pre-emptive action by the police on New Year’s Eve may have been the reason the celebrations passed off without any major incidents, says Interior Minister Petteri Orpo. Orpo said that police action had been based on intelligence that crimes were being planned.
NBI: No German link in Helsinki train station incident
The detective chief inspector of the National Board of Investigation says a preliminary probe has revealed no links between a case in Germany involving a large group of about one-thousand men robbing and molesting women, and another incident that took place in Finland at the New Year.
1000+ Iraqi men at Helsinki train station on NYE
Lügenpresse is still downplaying this.
The detective chief inspector of the National Board of Investigation says a preliminary probe has revealed no links between a case in Germany involving a large group of about one-thousand men robbing and molesting women, and another incident that took place in Finland at the New Year.
On Thursday Helsinki police said they saw similarities between the incident in Cologne, Germany involving a large group of men robbing and molesting women, and one that took place in Helsinki on New Year’s Eve.
But the NBI’s detective chief inspector Thomas Elfgren said that there was no reason to believe the incidents were connected.
“There is nothing that indicates that there was a planned a wave of harassment like the one which occurred in Cologne, Germany on New Year’s Eve,” Elfgren said, apparently playing down the issue.
Elfgren was responding to statements by Helsinki police and Interior Minister Petteri Orpo which voiced suspicion that the incidents on New Year’s Eve in the two cities were somehow connected or similar in nature.
Elfgren is leading the preliminary investigation of the arrest of six Iraqi citizen asylum seekers at a refugee reception centre in Kirkkonummi on December 31, 2015. The men were released right after the New Year.
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d3d_1452184247#C24IczhLLF8alBUZ.99
Austria joins Germany in feeling the groping hands of the Enrichers. Perhaps they should be considered part of one new country, called Gropistan… (the new Anschluss?)
Unfortunately for ‘elites’ the proverbial frog felt the heat a bit. Let’s see how many will turn up in Cologne on Saturday afternoon. Police will obviously turn up in large numbers:] Topsy-turvy.
I was so sorry to read of this lady’s dreadful ordeal. Perhaps the time has now come at last to treat crime as a crime rather than blaming these horrific incidents on cultural differences. There has been a predictable escalation of crimes committed by these third world troglodytes all largely unpunished, Fare dodging, muggings, shop lifting, attacks on hospital staff, which has led to serious sexual assaults and rape because they believe they can GET AWAY WITH IT. Arrest, convict and DEPORT for the sake of this lady and all your women folk!
“That there is political pressure to conceal sex crimes committed by young foreigners is not the case.”
This is a surprise. How could the reporter for OE24.at possibly know whether there is or is not any political pressure on the Salzburg Police to conceal sex crimes committed by young foreigners? No evidence is cited. Checking the original wording, it is “Eine politische Weisung, Sex-Angriffe durch junge Ausländer zu verschweigen, soll es nicht geben.” Not “gibt es nicht”, but “soll es nicht geben”. Would it be accurate to translate this “soll” as “The police spokeswoman said that there are no political instructions to conceal sex crimes committed by foreigners.” or maybe “It is claimed [by whom?] that there are no political instructions to be silent about sex crimes committed by foreigners.”? That is, the “soll” means that this information comes not from the reporter, but from someone else. Right?
I believe your second suggestion (“It is claimed [by some unnamed party] that…”) is correct. Why?
German grammar in the ’60s was going the way of American English grammar and ignoring the subjunctive *until* a famous (in the German-language press, anyway, according to my German degree advisor) case at law. A journalist was reporting on what he had heard at and about a story. The journalist used indicative (he said, we said) rather than subjunctive (they may have said, etc.) in his text.
He was brought up on charges of accessory to a crime before the fact because, the charging party (equivalent to a District Attorney in the U.S.) asserted, only a knowledgeable party would use indicative. Someone who wasn’t certain of the facts would use good old subjunctive.
That caught reporters and writers by the scruff of their necks for sure! Thus my belief: that the “soll es nicht geben” is the CYA version of “we can’t say for sure.”
I would welcome affirmation or contradiction from a native or more-fluent speaker of German than I am. Danke!
It was a similar process back in the ’70s that forced the US press to use “alleged” every other word, since English has only a vestigial subjunctive.
Journalists have become so fetishistic about “alleged” that they sometimes use it even after some perp has been convicted and sent to prison.
Don’t they just….
Yes, Mark. I’m pretty fluent in German (have been listening to all online AfD and Pegida speeches to make up my own mind.
I agree with your translation “It is claimed that there are no political instructions to be silent about sex crimes committed by foreigners.”
Cynthia in Kalifornien,
Thanks for your comments. One feature that German has but English lacks is the use of the subjunctive(?), like “sei” (instead of “ist”), to report what someone said. So “sei” = “is, he said” or “allegedly is”. The word “alleged” serves the same distancing function. Maybe that’s why the press is always so careful to refer to “Muhammad the alleged prophet of Islam”.
Oh, do you have names and other particulars associated with that case involving the legal distinction between indicative and subjunctive in German? In the Internet age, that might be enough to find an account of that case.
English has the subjunctive, but it is rare and vestigial. An example is the couplet that concludes Wilfred Owen’s sonnet “To My Friend — With an Identity Disc”:
But may thy heartbeat kiss it, night and day,
Until the name grow blurred and fade away.
The word “may” in the first line cues the subjunctive mood, and then “until” extends it in the second, so that the two final verbs, “grow” and “fade”, take the subjunctive form (i.e. they lack the “s” at the end).
Wow. Comments like this are why I read your site. You just toss it off, but for an essentially self- educated person such as myself ( I earned a college degree but primarily for a professional license), an analysis of language like that is pure gold, and is something I really hadn’t thought about. Thank you.
Etymology and linguistics have been my hobby for more than fifty years. I just love this stuff!
Mark Spahn, right, y0u put your finger on what is wrong with the translation of soll in the article. Of your two translations, the second hews closer to the original German. However, the problem is that English usage strongly discourages statements that obscure who did what and instead speak of some nebulous, impersonal entity having done or said something about something. Thus the first one (“The police spokeswoman said that … “) or better still, “She went on to say that …”, while technically introducing information not explicit in the German text, is more idiomatic English and still accurate.
A similar translation problem that stumps inexperienced translators is the use of wollen to indicate a claim on which the reporter abstains from expressing an opinion as to its veracity. “Er will sie gestern beim Einkaufen gesehen haben.” Wrong translation: “He wants to have seen her yesterday while she was shopping.” Correct: “He claims that he saw her yesterday while she was shopping.”
As you note, the particular German form of reported speech (“So sei…”) is usually translated as “He/she said that…” or close variations thereof.
See also the German wiki on reported speech: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indirekte_Rede
In particular, what it says there about the omitted Matrixsatz. We see this in the sentence that starts “Eine politische Weisung…” and ends “… nicht gegeben haben.” Here the omitted Matrixsatz is “, so weiter die Polizeisprecherin”, tacked onto the last word of the sentence. Even though it’s not there on the page, the reader mentally constructs it based on context.
The wiki on German reported speech limits itself to the various ways how tense and mode of “he/she said” can be transformed for reported speech, but does not cover the use of sollen to report a claim made by somebody (who can be either unspecified or — implicitly or explicitly — specified). A brief summary of that use is given here: http://www.canoo.net/services/OnlineGrammar/Wort/Verb/VollHilfModal/sollen.html#Anchor-Zitat-35882
Let me also clarify what I said above about the particular use of wollen to indicate a reported statement: it is not entirely neutral but leans towards skepticism, if not outright suspicion. Tricky to carry such nuance over into English!
By contrast, sollen used for the purpose of reported speech does have a neutral character.
“One guy took my friend in a choke hold. He kissed her and licked her face.” Sabrina S. (name changed) is still in shock.
Actually this is nothing new I heard the same type of story 6 years ago from an Australian girl who got licked in the face by an Indian who then told her “he and his friends was in Australia to have sex with western whores before getting married”.
What most people in Western Europe need to understand is mainly a couple of things:
1. Different groups got different cultures which leads to different socialization, this in turn leads to different actions in behavior. For example men from the Middle East interpret women who drink, wearing clothes who are not modest as prostitutes. Cultural relativism is no good.
2. Immigrants come from cultures where the clan and the tribe is you’re protector in other words honor cultures, this also leads to immigrants having a collective mindset. Once they come into the west they see how westerners rely on the state which in turn is very gentle towards the immigrants. This will lead them to think that westerners are easy targets which can’t protect themselves in groups and also that the women do not have protection from western men. Women without protection in a tribal culture are something you can use just as you want. What western Europeans need is not less ethnocentrism but more of it and the men being more protective of their sisters, gf’s and daughters.
3. There are most likely differences in empathy and altruism between different ethnic groups this is what recent anthropological studies show. Also there is a different in the contrasts between “in group vs out group empathy “between groups where people from Africa, India and Middle East for example show higher contrasts then for example western Europeans. This in turn leads to people who are not westerners relying on external morals like shame rather than internal morality like guilt. Once they enter a society without external morals through strong tribal elders, strong state and shame culture they will use this to their advantage.
4. A female’s sexuality is not really “free”, since it’s part of the honor of her tribe and the masculinity and morality of the men from the same ethnic tribe. Feminists like to say rape for example is not about sex it is about power which is true. But the west today does not because of anti-racism have the tools to understand what is happening. If group A’s women is being sexually conquered through rape, harassment or even consensual sex of Group B’s men which is grooming them. Then this power got an ethnic and collective element. Group B’s men is trying to show power of Group A and move forward their collective position as a group by using Group A’s women. It is a way for one ethnic group to show dominance over another ethnic group and through this demoralizes and conquer the men. This goes totally against the actual definition of ”anti-racism”.
I could probably write some more on the subject but i think this is enough.
If they genuinely mistook them for prostitutes, they’d be trying to negotiate the price first. That kind of misunderstanding would be genuine, and while perhaps not *pleasant* to be on the receiving end of, entirely forgivable and educatable.
I otherwise largely agree.
I suppose that being “culturally sensitive” would mean a bobbitting to these guys. I’m sure that their culture would understand that quite quickly…
Britain has already had its Muslim New Year’s Eve in Rotherham and Rochdale and other towns across northern England where the supremacists [redacted] while the politically correct authorities and the BBC said “No Islam to see here” and documented in 2030: Your Children’s Future in Islamic Britain.
[Note from the moderator: For an assertion as inflammatory as this one, we need SOURCES. Reputable sources. Do you have any?]
I think the writer meant that the Rotherham and Rochdale cases of which we are already aware were the equivalent of the new year’s eve incidents we’re only learning about.
Yes, you may be right. We’ll see if he’s willing to elaborate.
Dear moderators, this stuff has been splashed over the headlines in the UK for the last 2 years. And it is common knowledge that the BBC is a Govt propaganda outlet staffed by rabid socialists.
Do try to keep up, I thought you guys were on the ball.
I’m fully aware of that. But we need clarification that it was only a metaphorical New Year’s Eve he was referring to. Then everything’s copacetic.
I was recently in Salzburg and Vienna having rented a flat in Munich for a period of time. I saw nothing what has been aforementioned but I can believe it.
I am an older woman and a Yank and if anyone, anywhere would have approached a young woman as these men did they would get what for from me. No, I do not have a gun, just a New York City attitude.
Dear God, Austria and Bavaria are some of my favorite places on Earth. This can not continue.
I had my bottom pinched as I was standing at the Sacre Coeur beside my partner looking out over the city. When I swirled around, a bunch of young Arab men were skipping away, laughing. No way one could identify who actually did it, but they were all in on it.
That part of Paris won’t get our tourist dollars again for that reason, and during many metro rides I felt really unsafe because these groups would stand so close and seem aggressive. My partner had to stand defensively in front of me. Total opposite to Japan, where the subways were packed, but everyone was polite and kept a kind of ‘inner distance’.
Fewer and fewer and fewer parts of Europe seem worth visiting now.
I was middle aged, so ALL women are at risk from these hordes. Full daylight, lots of other tourists around that day at Sacre Coeur.
So there is NO WAY to stay safe once these creeps are in your country, YOU are the one who has to adjust into the ‘home or burkha’ lifestyle. What do you think, Frau Reker?
I’ve found that, like you, women in general can easily differentiate between groping and just being tightly packed, or accidental touching. Incidentally putting the back of hands on breasts is sometimes unavoidable when doing things like transferring a baby, and I’ve yet to have a woman complain of it, or of being brushed against in buses, etc. Everyone knows that it’s not the purpose, and that it’s just par for the course.
OTOH, it’s quite possible to make a woman feel uncomfortable just by looking at her in a special way. While it’s not illegal, it really isn’t very nice at all. I’ve seen a (fortunately former) colleague do it.
Butt-pinchers are at *best* overgrown pre-pubescent boys. In most cases, I think that it’s the first step on the “rape ladder”.