Germany Fires Army Instructor In Racial Incident
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
BERLIN — The German Defense Ministry said yesterday that it has dismissed an instructor who told a soldier to imagine hostile blacks in the Bronx while firing a machine gun.
The instructor was let go under a provision that permits the immediate dismissal of personnel who violate service obligations or whose continued service would harm the order or reputation of the military, a ministry spokesman said on condition of anonymity, as is customary.
The incident, captured in footage posted on the Internet, led the Bronx borough president to call for discipline against those responsible. The clip shows an instructor and a soldier dressed in camouflage in a forest. The instructor tells the soldier, “You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African-Americans are getting out, and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways. … Act.”
The soldier fires his machine gun and yells an obscenity several times in English between bursts.
