Saturday Night on the S41

Two drunk men boarded the S41 ring line in Berlin on a Saturday night in August 2015, at Landsberger Allee. They spotted a woman with two small children who looked Eastern European—that was enough. They called them "Asylantenpack," which translates roughly as asylum scum. They called "Heil Hitler." They told the family to get out of Germany.

Then one of the men dropped his trousers and urinated on the children.

Other passengers called emergency services. The two men—one 32 years old, both completely wasted—were arrested when they got off at Frankfurter Allee. The Tagesspiegel reported it. There was a week of outrage. Then the next thing happened.

I’ve watched the ambient temperature of a certain kind of hatred rise steadily enough that the specific incidents start to blur. This one didn’t blur. There’s no useful frame for it, nothing that converts it into something processable. It’s just what some people think is acceptable now—on a public train, on an otherwise ordinary Saturday night.

I keep thinking about what the children remember. Whether they do. Whether that’s better or worse.