A new German student exchange program was launched in the Bronx Friday - a year after a German military video showed an officer ordering a soldier to imagine shooting blacks in the borough.
Four Bronx high school students were selected to spend three weeks in Berlin, where they will stay with local host families. German students will also travel to the Bronx.
The 90-second video clip, shot in a German army compound, features an officer instructing a trainee to shoot and shout obscenities at his imaginary target - a group of Bronx African-Americans.
The exchange program will help rebuild the cross-cultural relationship destroyed by the video, educators and officials said.
“This will show the community that we don’t accept ignorance,” said German Consul General Dr.Hans-Jurgen Heimsoeth, who helped fund the students’ travel expenses.
Bronx Assemblyman Michael Benjamin (D-Morrisania), who created the program with his wife and chief of staff, Kennedy Williams-Benjamin, said the experience will teach students the acceptance of other cultures.
“They’ll learn that even though we all speak different languages, we’re all made the same,” he said.
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