Haltern am See

Haltern am See is a town and a municipality in the district of Recklinghausen, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is situated on the Lippe and the Wesel–Datteln Canal, approx. 15km north of Recklinghausen.The town is about 80km north of Düsseldorf.HistoryFormer Halteren was founded on February 3rd in 1289. They received the town charter by the prince-bishop of Münster, Everhard von Dienstag.During Kristallnacht (1938), the town's synagogue, Jewish cemetery and the houses and shops belonging to the town's Jews were vandalised. Jews were deported to concentration camps, the last five of whom were deported in January 1942. Only one of the town's Jews survived the Holocaust: Alexander Lebenstein, after whom a school is named.In March 2015, the town received international attention when 16 students and two teachers from the Joseph-König-Gymnasium in Haltern, were killed in the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash in the French Alps. They were on their way home from a student exchange with the Giola Institute in Llinars del Vallès, Catalonia, Spain. Haltern's mayor, Bodo Klimpel, described it as "the darkest day in the history of our city."