Visitors and traders are striving this Saturday, December 21 to enjoy the festivities despite the heavy toll of the car-ramming attack committed on a Christmas market in Magdeburg in Germany the day before.
“You have to live anyway”: at the Strasbourg Christmas market, visitors and traders are striving this Saturday, December 21 to enjoy the festivities despite the heavy toll of the car-ramming attack committed on a Christmas market in Magdeburg in Germany the day before.
At the foot of the large decorated tree on Place Kléber, the atmosphere remains family and relaxed on this last weekend before Christmas, and attendance seems even higher than in previous weeks.
“I find it very festive, we are delighted, even if there are a lot of people,” rejoices Marie de la Brosse, 77, who came from Bordeaux to visit Strasbourg with her husband for the first time.
Like most tourists and local residents, she is well aware of the tragedy which left five people dead and more than 200 injured in Magdeburg, and which affected her greatly.
“It’s dramatic what happened, it’s abominable,” she reacts. “But if we're afraid of everything, we stay locked up at home. We've seen police cars almost everywhere, so I think we have to go out. Life can't stop, we have to move on. 'Before”.
“It’s very brutal”
In fact, the presence of law enforcement is particularly important in Strasbourg, after the attack which left five dead and eleven injured in the streets of the Alsatian capital in December 2018.
To secure this event, which attracts more than three million visitors in one month, more than 1,000 police or gendarmerie officers and soldiers from Operation Sentinel are mobilized every day, in addition to firefighters and civil security.
At each entrance to the market, bag checks are carried out, which visitors comply with without complaint, and car traffic is prohibited throughout the perimeter of the event: ditches have been formed to prevent vehicles from entering.
The security system “is very substantial and already takes into account the risk of a car attack”, assures the press the prefect of Bas-Rhin, Jacques Witkowski. He will not be re-evaluated after the attack in Germany.
For Jasmin Schmitt, a German tourist who came from the neighboring region of Baden-Württemberg with her husband and son, this dark news remains difficult to cope with.
“Magdeburg is not a city where I would have thought that something like this could happen,” she explains. “I saw the video of the attack, it’s very hard, very brutal, it’s almost unbearable to watch.”
The family had avoided the Strasbourg Christmas market after the 2018 attack, and for their first visit in six years, here they are again discussing the attitude to adopt.
“You have to live anyway,” resolves, fatalistically, this 58-year-old woman, black cap on her hair, a glass of mulled wine in her hand. “If it happens, it happens. I tell myself that I could also die on the road… It's fate.”
“Targets”
Very busy in their small chalets behind the stalls of Christmas decorations, wooden objects and other craft products, the traders avoid thinking too much about the attacks.
“It is certain that Christmas markets have become very attractive targets for those who want revenge on ‘je ne sais quoi’,” recognizes Jean-Luc Pradels, 66, who runs a book stand for a Protestant association. . “It’s basically worrying, even if we have a surveillance system which reassures me. But we cannot avoid misfortune.”
In his association, several volunteers withdrew from running the stand after the 2018 attack. But this time, despite its scale, the Magdeburg attack seems too distant to really affect the Strasbourg Christmas market.
“People have already planned to come here, I don’t think it could really have any repercussions, or only at the margins,” he wants to believe.
The local authorities wanted to express their sympathy to their German counterparts. “We are deeply shocked (…) the fear is immense”, declared the environmentalist mayor of Strasbourg Jeanne Barseghian, saying on X “solidarity in these terrible hours”.
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