On 9 June 2004, a nail bomb containing 800 carpenter’s nails exploded in front of a hair salon located on Keupstraße in Cologne. The bomb, intended to murder as many people as possible, injured more than 22 people, four of them seriously.
For 7 years, the direct victims and the targeted communities were subjected to victim blaming. The investigating authorities used every opportunity to accuse the owner of the salon, as well as other business owners on Keupstraße, of being behind the attack. For 7 whole years, the victims were monitored, suspected, and pressured by the police and tax authorities. For 7 years, mistrust grew among the residents of Keupstraße.
It was not until 2011 that the truth of the attacks was as the direct victims and targeted communities had long suspected: both attacks were acts of right-wing terrorism committed by the neo-Nazi NSU Network. Hairdresser Hasan Yıldırım said: ‘On that day, I felt like a free bird, because we could no longer stand the pressure from the police.’
The racist ideology inherent to the attacks clearly sought to sew fear in the (post)migrant society. The authorities’ racist investigations, the 7 years of victim blaming, the insinuation that the residents had something to do with the bombing and, above all, the lack of solidarity on the part of the broader city of Cologne with the residents of Keupstraße, with the direct victims and targeted communities – all this is what the people of Keupstraße now refer to as the ‘bomb after the bomb’.
Even after the NSU trial in Munich, which by no means uncovered the entire neo-Nazi network or the involvement of the domestic secret service and authorities, those affected and solidarity initiatives continue to fight and demand clarification, compensation, consequences, and remembrance.
In accordance with the wishes of those affected, a memorial is to be erected in the immediate vicinity of the Keupstraße crime scene to commemorate the two bomb attacks committed by the NSU network in Cologne and to make visible the stories of those affected and their struggles against racism and antisemitism.
The artist Ulf Aminde, working with the author Svenja Leiber and following many discussions with the victims and solidarity initiatives, has developed a hybrid space of remembrance that creates a concrete site for remembrance within the public space. It uses a concrete floor slab that is a 1:1 scale copy of the foundations of the house attacked in Keupstraße. With the help of augmented reality, a digital, critical film archive will be added to give voice to the struggles and efforts of witnesses of the attacks and other victims of racism and antisemitism.
The initiative ‘Herksin Meydanı – Platz für Alle’ recently moved into a ‘Room for All’ directly opposite the corner where the memorial will be built. It will be opened on the eve of the day of remembrance and is intended to provide a space for encounters, remembrance, art, and culture, bringing together people from the street, the neighbourhood, and the city.
