Attacks are given names that rarely name the victims or the perpetrators; not even the deeds or events themselves are named, but rather the places where they happened. However, before places are commemorated, there are people, their lives, families and stories that should be named and told and must not be concealed.
The speechlessness of the commemoration of Jewish and/or migrant fellow citizens shows how helpless the handling of antisemitic violence is in this country, how it is repressed and postponed, although it urgently needs to be addressed and integrated.
Too often and for too long, people in Germany have pretended that antisemitism is the problem of others, of individuals, of certain groups, of a political or religious nature. They forget that antisemitism is a deeply rooted and poorly concealed fact in this country. In particular, their persistent refusal to face up to their own history, preferring instead to project it onto some supposed outsiders, causes this wound to reopen again and again in the most diverse places, wounding people, and often causing them to die.
In 2021, there were at least 3,028 criminal offences with an antisemitic background across Germany. The number of cases is rising. The process of actually solving cases of right-wing terrorism, on the other hand, takes decades, is delayed, pushed into the background, or completely forgotten.
And thus it took 17 years for the suspect, Ralf S., in the attack at the Düsseldorf-Wehrhahn S-Bahn station on 27 July 2000 to be charged. The suspect, a dealer of military paraphernalia with ties to the right-wing scene and who lived near to the scene of the crime, had bragged about the crime in his neighbourhood.
Although ten people, six of whom were Jewish, were injured, some of them seriously, and an unborn child was killed, the defendant escaped conviction. The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe confirmed a judgement by the Düsseldorf Regional Court, which had ruled in favour of acquittal in a late trial in 2018.
The Jewish community in Düsseldorf is the third largest in Germany, but its visibility in the city is very discreet. The New Synagogue is guarded by police officers standing under a small roof. This is also a reality in Germany, and is accepted as a given.
Some of the victims of the Wehrhahn attack were members of the Jewish community; they were coming from a language school where they had been learning German. They came to Germany to find a new language and a safe home. The attack with a homemade pipe bomb, however, traumatised them and brutally disrupted their process of settling into their new home. The accused right-wing extremist, who escaped conviction due to a lack of clear evidence, received compensation on top of it all. The right-wing terrorist attack remains unpunished, unsolved and, after more than two decades, remains difficult to commemorate. This attack demonstrates so many things that we would like to have overcome. However, the road to atonement and remembrance remains long.
