Authorities in Berlin have detained a teenage Syrian refugee after a man was stabbed near the city’s Holocaust Memorial late Friday – as divisive rhetoric swells over Germany’s immigration policy, ahead of a consequential national election.

The police said they had detained a suspect in the assault, which occurred among the labyrinth of concrete slabs at one of the German capital’s most sacrosanct sites.

German police arrested a suspect in the stabbing on Friday evening at Berlin's Holocaust memorial that seriously injured a man two days before a watershed national election.