On May 29, 1993, five people were killed in a racist attack in Solingen. The Düsseldorf theater is now commemorating the crime with an interactive bus tour of the city.
The bus trip to Solingen starts shrill: stewardesses in futuristic costumes collect the theatergoers, who are mesmerized and seated. Supposedly, an eventful journey into the 1990s awaits them in this interactive play: But the goal is Solingen’s oppressive past.
Bassam Ghazi is on the bus. He developed the play about the arson attack: “Solingen 1993”. It deliberately takes place on the streets of Solingen and not in a theater space. “We want to confront the city with the commemoration,” says Ghazi. “We kept it under wraps at the time and talked about it far too little.”
Interactive journey through Solingen
Visitors are taken to venues in Solingen where small scenes are performed or original texts from the time are recited. Visitors use their mobile phones to work their way interactively through the city and the history of the arson attack: for example to a weather-beaten park bench. This is where the four perpetrators drank before setting the fire.
The visitors look at their mobile phones, watch short films in which “completely normal” Germans make deeply racist statements. For example: “We want to try to get the German language back from foreign bodies.”
After that, the participants should distribute small stickers around the city with the names of the five victims of May 29, 1993.
The city is still dealing with the attack today
That night there was an arson attack on the house of the Genç family from Solingen. Five people died. Gürsün İnce, Hatice Genç, Gülüstan Öztürk, Hülya Genç and Saime Genç. The attack is considered to be one of the most serious racist attacks in the history of the Federal Republic and is still occupying the city today. Four juvenile offenders were identified. They set the fire out of xenophobia and were later sentenced to long prison terms.
The theatrical walk takes visitors through a city still suffering from the events of that one night in 1993.
Director Bassam Ghazi was 18 at the time and after the arson attack he put two buckets of water next to his bed, he says. And he bought a baseball bat. “I had to do something then, and today we as a society have to look into these blind corners of our past.” He is convinced that there will be more attacks: “The thought is all the more important: What does this suffering mean for those affected?”
Memorial is expanded
For the 30th anniversary, the city of Solingen will extend the memorial in the city to honor Mevlüde Genç. Mevlüde Genç lost two children, two grandchildren and a niece during the night. From one day to the next, the life she had built up with her husband in Solingen was destroyed. Instead of hating, she reacted with prudence and advocated reconciliation. For this she later received the Federal Cross of Merit and the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. For many years she was considered the voice of peace. She died last year at the age of 79.
“Mevlüde Genç Square”
A central square in Solingen is now becoming “Mevlüde-Genç-Platz”. Many people in Solingen experienced the outbreak of violence in their own city 30 years ago as a shock. For the family, who lives in Solingen, the attack is still a terrible tragedy from which they suffer. The house of the Genç family in Solingen has since been demolished. A memorial stone commemorates the victims. On a circular plate is the sentence: “At this point died as victims of a racist arson attack.” Below are the names of the five people who died.
“My parents are not well”
Among the victims are two sisters whom Cihan Genç did not get to know. Cihan was born a year after the attack. His parents Kamil and Hatice lost two daughters in the fire.
That means Cihan had two sisters he never got to play with. “My parents are not doing well. It depends on the day. A lot of pain, a lot of suffering, actually they are very bad. They can’t sleep every day,” says Cihan.
That’s why it’s important to know that the suffering of the survivors goes much further than that night of May 29th. “It wasn’t just any Turk who died, people died and the hate has to stop,” says Cihan Genç. He hopes that society from Solingen will learn that people communicate better with each other. “People should let themselves be spoken to and somehow put the hate aside and then ask: Hey, how are you? What are you doing?”
Against forgetting and racism
Another grandson, Can Genç, adds: “It is important that young people and the new generations of Solingen and the violence know: ‘We have to do something against racism in our society, even today.'” So that you never forget that and always remembered, every day, every week.
At the end of the interactive theater tour, visitors arrive at the house of the Genç family. They hold picture frames with transparent foil in the air, with the burning house on it – which can be seen again. A visit to the theater that becomes an intensive commemoration. The horror and hatred of that time are still very noticeable today.