The claim
Videos and images from New Year's morning 2023 show burned out cars in Berlin. These are used to incite against “criminal migrants”. Large tabloid media and parts of German politics are in the same vein: 2/3 of the suspects are said to be migrants, the ÖRR would hide “the truth”.
Our conclusion
The pictures come from Knobelsdorffstrasse in Berlin Charlottenburg. Far away from the hotspot areas where emergency services were attacked on New Year's Eve. The numbers of suspects show: the majority are German. Lists of first names do not serve to solve problems, but rather to further divide society.
New Year's Eve in Berlin. The images shocked all of Germany: riots, violence against emergency services, burning vehicles. This already existed before the pandemic, but the extent of it is new and is causing alarm sirens to ring for many people. While parts of politics are thinking loudly about extensive bans on firecrackers or want to rethink current social and integration policies, the usual suspects in the tabloid media and the (extreme) right are making it very easy for themselves: migrants are the scapegoats. And anyone who does not take part in this agitation is “hiding the truth”.
The burned out cars the day after
Some images from New Year's Eve were so haunting that they will probably stay in the collective memory for quite some time: the firecracker that exploded on a police officer's neck, seriously injuring him. The fire extinguisher thrown onto the windshield of an ambulance. The view from the fire truck showing it being shot at with rockets. The burned out bus and the charred apartment building above it.
Another scene, intended to illustrate what Berlin looked like the next morning, shows a row of burned-out cars. The exact location is not mentioned. Only one thing is clear, it is neither Kabul, Syria nor Ukraine, but: “This is Berlin on New Year’s Day 2023”.

___STEADY_PAYWALL___
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one thing made us suspicious when looking through the photos and video of the scene: In the foreground you can see the six burned-out cars. However, the environment, the background, is strangely tidy. Families with small children look in amazement at the strange things on the street. A little work analyzing the video images (that's all we had at the beginning) and a comparison with the often very brief descriptions of the police operations that night led us to a clue: This street does not belong to one of the Berlin districts that are so popular as social hotspots to be discribed. This is the rather affluent area of Berlin, Charlottenburg and we see Knobelsdorffstrasse here.
Also around 12:30 a.m., a parked car burned on Knobelsdorffstrasse in Charlottenburg. Due to the strong wind, the flames spread to other cars, resulting in six vehicles, one motorcycle and four bicycles, some of which were significantly damaged. Firefighters extinguished the fire.
Excerpt from the Berlin Police press release
This reads a little differently than the similar reports from that night. No word from the suspects who set the cars on fire. There were no groups of people who consciously sought a confrontation with emergency services. Finally, we even find a video on Twitter that shows the night-time firefighting work on Knobelsdorffstrasse. Here too, no sign of rioting, no streets filled with rubbish. Only emergency services who try to keep the damage to the vehicles as low as possible:
How did these vehicles catch fire? Only one burned initially. The wind was the main cause of the much greater damage. Was it arson the first time? Was it a stray rocket? Or a stupidly and negligently placed firecracker? We (and the Berlin police) don't know at the moment. War rhetoric and “criminal migrants” as scapegoats are clearly out of place in this very setting!
Ethnic background of the suspects and incorrect numbers
Was “the truth” about New Year’s Eve “hidden” on public television? At least the country's largest tabloid newspaper thinks so. The problem is that she uses false figures for her claims, which have since been revised and clarified. A police spokesman announced on the evening of January 3rd that of the 145 people in Berlin, 45 had German citizenship. Many ÖRR media initially spread exactly this spin: they were mostly migrants.
The Tagesspiegel cites “new riot statistics” from the Berlin police, which now distinguishes why the 145 people were arrested. This also includes offenses that are not directly related to attacks on emergency services or damage to property, such as breach of the peace. According to these statistics, “most of the perpetrators arrested after pure firecracker attacks on police officers and firefighters were German citizens and under 21 years old.” Of the 38 people who were taken into custody because of this, 2/3 were German.
But these numbers also need to be broken down further. The Tagesspiegel writes, “only age gives an indication of possible background,” without going into further detail. “In some cases, emergency services were attacked by minors with firecrackers from blank guns.” Emergency services suspect that among the people who attacked the emergency services there were those with and those without a migration background. The mobs of masked people who increasingly hindered and attacked the fire brigade are said to have been the latter.
Some people ask whether the people with German passports are really “Germans”. The first names of the suspects should help with the assessment. Fortunately, this new spin is often recognized for what it is:
To summarize it again briefly:
The migration issue is a hit. In some circles, people are quick to jump to conclusions and think they are on the right side: New Year's Eve shows once again that Germany has a "foreigner problem" - and that the public media is turning a blind eye to it. It's two birds with one stone: But in a cheap and also factually wrong way. An amateurish fallacy or a willful distortion of the facts. You don't know which is worse.
Comment by Steven Sowa
Conclusion: The New Year's Eve riots in Berlin were bad. However, the pictures of the burned-out cars on Knobelsdorffstrasse are not directly related to this. The current figures from the Berlin police also no longer correspond to what some right-wing politicians and tabloid media like to put together: simple answers with young migrants as scapegoats. Berlin will have to think carefully about what consequences it will draw from the incidents. However, racist snapshots are of little help.

By the way, there were also riots and destruction by right-wing extremists on New Year's Eve: “About 200 people rioted on the Borna market square in Saxony on New Year's Eve. Residents report shouts of 'Sieg Heil' and men wearing ski masks,” writes t-online.de .
Sources: Police Berlin , ARD, BZ Berlin , Tagesspiegel , Twitter, Bild , t-online.de
Further fact check: Attack on ambulance: What does this video show?
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