What can a worthy commemoration of the victims of the NSU look like? The traffic light parties want to create a place of remembrance and a documentation center. The question of where it should be located could be particularly sensitive.
The traffic light parties have agreed that a place of remembrance and documentation center should be created for the victims of the right-wing extremist NSU terror. The coalition agreement states: “We support the establishment of a memorial site and a documentation center for the victims of the NSU.”
“I think that’s very good. I’m looking forward to it,” says Meral Sahin from the interest group for Keupstrasse in the Mühlheim district of Cologne, which is dominated by Turkish business people. In 2004, right-wing terrorists from the NSU detonated a nail bomb on Keupstrasse and injured 22 people – some seriously.
Sahin witnessed the attack as a shopkeeper. What is particularly important to her about the federal government’s project: “This documentation center shouldn’t just be for those affected, for God’s sake. It should inform schoolchildren and students. People who can go there on courses or in seminars and get information, can continue their education. This is supposed to provide education.”
Don’t just remember the crimes
This wish corresponds to the ideas of Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. It is important to the SPD politician that a place is created where not only the crimes of the NSU are remembered, but also the failure of the authorities at the time. The investigators have been looking for perpetrators for years in the victims’ environment, but not in the right-wing extremist milieu: “We owe it to the relatives to keep the memories of these terrible murders alive, but also to keep up with whatever mistakes there were, including on the part of the authorities. were made.”
On behalf of the minister, the Federal Agency for Civic Education prepared a feasibility study. This was presented at the end of February. Thomas Krüger, the President of the Federal Center, emphasizes the necessity of the planned facility. The NSU issue is a gap in the German memory landscape. There is generally a gap in memory when it comes to right-wing terrorist acts, says Krüger.
The “National Socialist Underground”
The “National Socialist Underground” (NSU) was a terrorist cell consisting of Beate Zschäpe, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt, which for years from 2000 onwards carried out ten murders undetected throughout Germany, five of them in Bavaria. Their victims were nine traders of Turkish and Greek origin and a German policewoman. Mundlos and Böhnhardt also carried out two bomb attacks in Cologne, injuring dozens of people.
The two killed themselves in 2011 to avoid arrest – only then was the NSU exposed. Zschäpe, the only survivor of the trio, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2018 after a trial that lasted more than five years – as an accomplice, even if there is no evidence that she was at one of the crime scenes.
Where is the right place?
In addition to content aspects and the possible organizational structure, the study also addresses the question of location: “After careful consideration, we proposed a network of decentralized locations, namely the locations where the murder attacks and arson attacks took place, and a central location.”
The Federal Interior Minister doesn’t want to discuss the location issue without discussing it with the victims’ relatives: “I think it should be in the capital, in Berlin. I know that Nuremberg is also very welcome. But there are also relatives who say they “We don’t want it to take place in one of the cities where the crime took place. But that would be the case with Nuremberg.”
Those affected against the location in Saxony
There are also reservations about a location in Saxony. The NSU terrorists lived there and planned their attacks. Relatives express fear of being confronted with racism in AfD strongholds. However, Meral Sahin from Keupstrasse in Cologne-Mühlheim sees it differently: “I think that this statement contains just as many prejudices as what I feel as a human being when people have prejudices about me.”
The discussion is just beginning. The study by the Federal Agency for Civic Education recommends that the memorial site and documentation center for the victims of the NSU be launched during this legislative period.
Dietrich Karl Mäurer, ARD Berlin, tagesschau, March 22, 2024 11:35 a.m