A few hours after the event that will forever be etched in the memory of this city, a helicopter can be heard circling over Magdeburg’s city center.

It is 11 p.m., four hours after a suspected assassin raced through the Magdeburg Christmas market. You can also hear sirens every now and then. Otherwise it is very quiet. There are hardly any passengers on the move. But there are ambulances everywhere, police with machine guns. Blue lights everywhere. But also everywhere: Christmas lights. The whole city is full of them, they hang on houses, shopping centers, lanterns. There are even entire light installations – a tram, an airplane and the city’s coat of arms, a maid in a castle. Everything was specially set up for Christmas.

Die Magdeburg world of lights is a festival that means something to the city. One million LEDs every year, the most extensive Christmas lighting in Central Germany. You’re proud of it.

The Christmas market is now a crime scene

Now there is caution tape fluttering everywhere under the lights. The area around the Christmas market – many streets, intersections – was occupied by the police largely cordoned off. Because all of this is now, as a police officer says, a crime scene.

On Friday evening around 7 p.m. a man drove his car into the Magdeburg Christmas market. He injured at least 60 people, 15 of them seriously. Killed at least two, including a toddler. He was then arrested by the police and is in custody. It is said to have been a man who comes from Saudi Arabia, has lived in Germany since 2006 and worked as a doctor here. He is said to be 50 years old. Prime Minister Pure Haseloff (CDU) said that it was assumed that the perpetrator was a lone perpetrator.

Whatever findings emerge in the next few days, one thing is already clear: what the perpetrator has done will remain.

The Magdeburg Christmas market is popular. With the old, with the young, with those who have moved here, those who have returned and those who have stayed. With everyone. A natural meeting place, always well attended, with a Ferris wheel, a medieval market, with lard cake and the same singing moose above a mulled wine stand. At the weekend, people crowd close together and have to be careful not to spill their mulled wine on each other. It was exactly here, through one of the few narrow streets, that the perpetrator raced through.

It hit the city right in the heart. It seems broken that evening.

Reiner Haseloff, the Prime Minister, said on Friday evening: “Especially in the context of what a Christmas market is supposed to bring, it is really one of the worst things you can imagine.”