Grief shrouds German town as air crash victims mourned

HALTERN, Germany: Flags flutter at half-mast outside the church where hundreds of candles are lit for a memorial service for the 16 pupils and two teachers from one German school killed in the French Alps air disaster.
Normal life in the small northwestern town of Haltern am See is all but “paralysed” with shock and grief, local officials say, after the brutal loss of so many young lives last week on a remote mountainside in southeastern France.
A steady flow of people have signed a condolence book at the central St Sixte Church where an ecumenical religious service was held on Wednesday to remember the victims of a school that has become a symbolic focal point of national mourning.
“Paula, we miss you. Rest in Peace,” reads one message in rounded, childlike handwriting with a heart.
Loudspeakers were set up outside the doors of the church for those unable to find a seat inside and ready to brave the glacial winds.
Among the 150 people who died when the Germanwings jetliner crashed were 14 girls and two boys aged 15 and 16 and their two teachers from the Joseph Koenig Gymnasium who were returning from an exchange trip to Spain.
Half the victims onboard the flight headed from Barcelona to Duesseldorf were German.
Uppermost on people’s minds in Haltern was showing solidarity with the victims’ families.
At the station, school pupils Eric Orban and Jakow Styeklov, aged 18 and 17, have travelled from the city of Duesseldorf, an hour away, to attend the ceremony.
“We’ve come to grieve and say goodbye,” they say.
The incomprehension of the loss is all the more intensified by investigator’s suspicions that the plane’s co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately steered it into the mountain.
“As a Christian, I cannot forgive him for the moment,” Markus Delitsch, 52, said, lighting a candle.
His son attends the same school as those who died, and since the crash, he and his family have held conversations at home to try to take in what happened, he said.
“It’s really as if the town is paralysed,” Georg Bockey, a spokesman for the town hall, told AFP.
“Everyone knows someone, who knows someone close to the victims,” he said, adding the alleged actions of the 27-year-old German co-pilot, who had suffered from severe depression in the past, made it “still harder to accept”.
Since the crash, Haltern town authorities have halted meetings, sports clubs have postponed matches and a local celebration due to have been attended by about 1,000 people was called off.
Haltern, which lies in a traditional mining region, is experiencing “its blackest days since World War II” when it was heavily bombed, Bockey said sorrowfully.
Most shops and businesses in the heart of the redbricked town display small notices in their windows remembering the victims.
Despite the start of the Easter holidays, the high school has remained open this week for families and pupils to go in; help is on hand from special counsellors.
Its steps are covered in a sea of candles, wreaths and bouquets of flowers with portraits of the young victims and messages of sympathy and solidarity.