Violent summer pool gangs raise temperatures in Berlin

The shrieks of children’s laughter mean visitors can hear Berlin’s popular Columbiabad outdoor swimming pool long before they see it.

With a 50m pool, a water slide, a baby pool and an adjacent park area, the complex is particularly popular with families in the landlocked capital who cannot afford a seaside holiday.

But the Columbiabad was forced to close for a week, after battles between gangs of local youths – largely of Turkish and Arab background – turned violent, as they do every year when the temperatures rise.

Police were called to the pool complex two weekends ago when a 20-year-old man was rushed to hospital with multiple face injuries after he was beaten up by an 18-year-old and his friends. After a second group fight later that Sunday afternoon, police closed the pool early and it remained shut for a week. For pool employees, the violence and gang feuds are nothing new in the summer season.

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“Things are peaceful early each day with the morning swimmers and the families, but heat up in the afternoon when the teenage lads arrive,” said one pool employee who asked not to be named. “They start jostling and intimidating others and fights start. They threaten if you try to intervene – so we don’t.”

The violence is not new. Last year a riot at the Columbiabad left six guests, four security staff and a pool employee injured. An employee who ordered the youths to leave the pool was, as he left work, attacked with tear gas and batons.

Afterwards, city politicians promised improved staffing and security for this season, but employees issued a public letter last month warning of “ongoing, deliberate, psychological terrors” from gangs.

As well as risks to staff, they warned that women and minorities – especially trans and queer people – “are increasingly being threatened with violence with verbal attacks, spitting or bullying” commonplace.

Some pools are operating reduced hours this year because of the high number of employees on sick leave. Those who remain accuse city politicians of ignoring a systemic problem rather than face accusations of racism.

Berlin’s governing mayor Kai Wegener has condemned the violence at the open-air pools but warned against blanket accusations against people with a migrant background, who form a large proportion of the population in the Columbiabad’s Neukölln district.

“The vast majority behave properly, it is a small minority are responsible for the riots,” said Mr Wegener. “We will not tolerate a small proportion of our pools becoming lawless spaces, we need to keep out the repeat offenders.”

Asked about the ethnic background of the repeat offenders, Mr Wegener attributed their behaviour to “boredom and a lack of prospects”.

For Güner Balci, integration officer in Neukölln, many regulars at the pool “are surprised that the Columbiabad is getting so much attention”.

“There have always been fights ... but the conflicts have grown and shifted,” she said. “We have in certain groups an image of masculinity, where one demonstrates power through a dominance of violence ... and the group as a whole suffers because they are all perceived as ‘the migrants’.”

The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine daily took a different view, criticising politicians who “bend over backwards to ignore” the cause of the problem.

“As long as you keep being surprised against violence in pools without seriously tackling the issues,” it said, “you cannot be surprised if citizens look elsewhere for political alternatives.”

When the Columbiabad reopened this week, security staff were visible throughout the facility and at the entrance, where the queue was even longer than usual.

“We have to show our IDs to get in now,” said Markus, a 48-year-old swimmer, joking: “It makes me feel like I’m at the airport for a foreign holiday.”