UF professors, students react to Berlin market attack

In the aftermath of a deadly attack on a Christmas market in Berlin on Monday, UF students and professors with ties to Germany mourned the loss of life — while urging others not to blame the attack on refugees.

A tractor trailer crashed through a crowd at the market Monday night, killing 12 people and hospitalizing 48 others, some with serious injuries, according to CNN. German authorities had arrested a 23-year-old Pakistani refugee as a suspect Tuesday, but no proof linked him to the crime, and he was later released, The New York Times reported.

The Islamic State of Syria, also known as ISIS, released a statement Tuesday through it’s news agency describing the truck driver as “a soldier,” according to the Times. The group did not clarify who the driver was, if he was directly involved in the organization or if he was sympathetic to it.

Since 2005, about 20 UF students a year have travelled to Berlin for a two-week photography study-abroad program lead by John Freeman, a UF photography professor. Although the university has the ability to cancel study-abroad trips in unsafe areas, Freeman said he doesn’t think the attack will affect future programs.

After a similar attack in Nice, Paris, last year, two students dropped out of the Berlin trip, but their spots were quickly replaced, he said. Freeman said he isn’t afraid to return to a city he’s previously lived in for three years.

“Berlin has always been safe,” he said. “I wondered last year if all of the Syrian refugees might cause any issue for safety or concern in Berlin. We got there last year and everything felt absolutely the same as it had for the previous 11 years.”

Students last travelled to Berlin in May and passed through the western part of the city, where the attack happened, he said.

“I was heartbroken because the city has been through so much,” Freeman said. “This was like a punch in the gut.”

When Jonathan Ortiz, a UF economics sophomore born in Germany, heard about the attack Monday night, he followed it on German and American news sites, he said. None of his family or friends were in Berlin, but he remembered going to similar Christmas markets when he lived in the country.

Ortiz, who lived in Germany for about 17 years, said the markets are unlike anything in America, packed with people shopping at small booths, eating candy and drinking hot mulled wine called Glühwein. He said he was saddened when he realized the attack happened during one of Germany’s Christmas traditions.

“It’s one of the best things about Christmas,” he said. “Especially around this time of year, it’s just so tragic that people go out and do these types of things.”

Ortiz said as disheartening as the attack was, Germans should resist blanketing blame on foreigners in the country.

The policy, implemented by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, allowed more than a million migrants and refugees to pour into the country.

“I just think these sort of knee-jerk reactions are ridiculous,” the 19-year-old said. “It just doesn’t make sense to get people riled up over things that you have no idea whether or not those were the facts”

Ann-Kathrin Thiessen, a UF German graduate teaching assistant, wrote in an email that even if the Pakistani refugee committed the act, it does not reflect on other asylum seekers living in Germany.

“There are always crazy people in this world who are willing to do horrible things,” she said. “That should not let us stop to help all the other people who (have to) flee their countries for various reasons.”

Franz Futterknecht, a UF German professor who was born and raised in Germany, wrote in an email that the country's right-wing press will use the attack in Berlin to “prove that immigrants are evil and criminal people.”

“Personally, I am as saddened about the mindless killings in Berlin as I was about the mindless killing in Nice,” he said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, third from left, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, fourth from left, and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, second from right, visit the site of the attack in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2016, the day after a truck ran into a crowded Christmas market and killed several people.