A stunned German town mourned 16 students who went down aboard Germanwings Flight 9525 on their way home Tuesday from a Spanish exchange, while the opera world grieved for two singers who were returning from performing in Barcelona—one of them with her baby.
“This is surely the blackest day in the history of our town,” a visibly shaken Mayor Bodo Klimpel said after the western town of Haltern was shocked by news that 16 students from the local high school and two teachers had been on the plane. They had just spent a week in Spain.
Some hugged, cried and laid
flowers in front of the Joseph Koenig High School, where the
10th-graders had studied, and lit candles on its steps.
“This is pretty much the worst thing you can imagine,” Klimpel said at a hastily called news conference.
An announcement was made to
students Tuesday lunchtime that “that we were all free now but we
shouldn’t be happy,” said Christopher Schweigmann, 16, a 10th-grade
student who said he lost two good friends. Students went to a service
Tuesday evening, and “everyone was in tears in the church,” he said.
“It’s impossible to believe that they all won’t be there anymore in the coming days,” he said.
Crisis counselors were at the school soon after the crash.
“I think many haven’t really
grasped what happened, and I think the grief will come a bit later for
many,” counselor Ingo Janzen said.
“The town is totally silent, nothing is happening anymore in town, everyone is like petrified,” said resident Gerd Schwarz, 64.
The town of 38,000 lies about 50 miles northeast of the plane’s destination, Duesseldorf.
Officials confirmed that the
school group was among the 150 people onboard the plane. Among the
victims were also two opera singers, business travelers en route to a
trade fair in Cologne and two babies.
A total of 67 Germans, many Spaniards, two Australians, and one person each from the Netherl
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