Allegations of racism against Barnet's twin town of Siegen have been met with "astonishment" on the part of the Germans.
Young members of Barnet Youth Against Racism claimed they suffered intimidation and abuse during a summer trip to the town, including being referred to as "slave" and "the chocolate one".
Silke Werner, chairman of Siegen's Friends of Barnet, met her Barnet counterpart Keith Dyall in Mill Hill over the weekend to discuss the allegations. They issued a joint statement: "The friends are astonished at the allegations against our twin town.
"Frau Silke Werner was introduced to the leader of the English group the day before departure and no problems were mentioned. Frau Werner observed that the young people appeared to get on well... the English young people seemed to have enjoyed their visit to Germany."
The statement added: "We are given to understand that a number of the English group have continued to correspond with their German hosts on a friendly basis."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article