Berlin Holocaust memorial man seriously injured climbing on concrete slabs

Some tourists treat the somber Holocaust Memorial in Berlin like a playground. Photo / Marcus Schreiber

A young man was severely injured Sunday when he fell off a slab that's part of the German capital's memorial to the 6 million Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust.

The 21-year-old tourist, whose name was not released in line with German privacy rules, fell several meters early Sunday and was taken to the hospital with head injuries, the German news agency DPA reported.

Police were still investigating the cause of the accident, DPA reported. Local Berlin media said the young man was an Italian tourist who had underestimated the height when jumping off the slab, which was in an unlit part of the memorial.

The Holocaust memorial in central Berlin is comprised of 2711 concrete blocks. Photo / Marcus Schreiber

The Berliner Zeitung reported that the tourist was brought to a hospital on Sunday night at around 1.50am. It is reported that the Italian man misjudged his landing falling down a deep depression between the blocks and a large staircase.

Whether he should have been on the memorial in the first place is another question.

The type and severity of the tourists' wounds were not known.

The memorial, a field of 2,711 gray concrete slabs near the Brandenburg Gate that opened in 2005, is open around the clock. Visitors are supposed to refrain from activities such as running and jumping from one slab to another.

The somber commemoration of the country's role in the genocide is in a prominent part of central Berlin. The appropriateness of using the concrete slabs to sunbathe or eat picnics is a subject of regular public debate.

A youth jumps over charcoal-colored concrete slabs of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin. Photo / Marcus Schreiber

While the vast number of visitors are respectful younger, international tourists have little idea what it commemorates.

Earlier this month, Berlin's police chief apologised for an incident in which officers were pictured practicing push-ups on part of the memorial.

"The Holocaust memorial is not an adventure playground," said a statement from the Police Union (GdP), who declared there would be "appropriate consequences" for the officers involved.

- Associated Press with additional reporting