Between 22 and 26 August 1992, the largest pogrom in German post-war history took place in Rostock-Lichtenhagen.Several hundred right-wing extremists and thousands of applauding spectators were involved in the pogrom, with the latter not only obstructing the police and fire brigade, but even actively offering neo-Nazis protection from the police.
When the ‘Reception Centre of the Central Reception Centre for Asylum Seekers’, where the pogrom had begun, was evacuated on 24 August, the extremists besieged the adjacent hostel, where Vietnamese people and a ZDF television crew had been staying, and set it on fire with Molotov cocktails. At the height of the clashes, the police withdrew completely, leaving the trapped people behind – exposed to the attacks, the flames, and the mob without any help.
2022 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the 1992 Rostock-Lichtenhagen pogrom and with it the debate on the unresolved question of how complex, intersectional, and multi-perspectival remembrance might be possible. And also: How can the perspective of affected communities and survivors be brought into focus, i.e., a perspective that has most been ignored by civil society and state remembrance practices to date? While almost no survivors of the pogrom were invited to the official commemorative events until the nineteenth anniversary, the twentieth anniversary represented a first, small turning point. In 2012, under pressure from the community, Vietnamese victims were invited for the first time, a full 20 years after the pogrom. However, they were denied the right to speak, so that, as the cultural and political scientist Kien Nghi Ha describes, they were ‘decorative accessories to the public staging’ of the state commemoration.Since then, however, more efforts have been made to include the perspectives of former Vietnamese contract workers when reporting on the Rostock-Lichtenhagen pogrom.
Whether this is solely due to the initiative of the Vietnamese community in Rostock is questionable in my opinion, as there have of course been other developments in recent decades. The way in which the right-wing terrorist NSU murder series was uncovered in 2011, for example, made it clear to a broader public that the perspectives of affected communities and direct victims of racist violence were and are ignored by the majority population. The right-wing terrorist network, which conducted a series of racist murders between 2000 and 2007, remained undetected until its ‘self-disclosure’. At the same time, however, the police had largely ruled out right-wing extremist motives, instead seeking the perpetrators within the victims’ communities. The city of Rostock, where Mehmet Turgut was murdered by the NSU, would probably not have got away with a similarly ignorant approach in 2012.
Although the twentieth anniversary had at least brought some movement into the culture of remembrance, in 2022, ten years on, we must acknowledge that affected communities and survives have not been structurally, continuously that there is no structural, continuous and sustainable inclusion of those affected and survivors of the pogrom.
Roma people’s perspectives on Lichtenhagen
When speaking about the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen in 1992, however, it is often forgotten that the events were initially directed against Roma people from Romania and not against the Vietnamese residents. The antiziganism of the pogrom is usually ignored and a Roma perspective within the culture of remembrance organised by civil society or the state remains minimal or lacking entirely.
Perhaps this fact can be read as antiziganism being embedded within the culture of remembrance, including left-wing and anti-racist approaches.In any case, including these people in the commemoration and historical appraisal of the events seems to be considered unimportant. It remains one of the fatal gaps in the treatment of this pogrom, one that must be urgently addressed.
In the spirit of truly intersectional remembrance, it is also important to note that antiziganism does not only exist within the white majority society; it is also present in the Vietnamese community. Incidentally, this antiziganism continues to make it seem impossible come to terms with the pogrom in a spirit of solidarity and equality from the perspective of all victims and affected communities.
Activism and Jewish perspectives
Furthermore, the following event within the Rostock-Lichtenhagen complex of events surrounding the pogrom remains largely unknown: a group of Jews and Roma called the ‘Sons and Daughters of the Deported Jews of France’ occupied Rostock city hall in October 1992. This group included Beate Klarsfeld, who became famous for slapping then Federal Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger in the face.
This event therefore makes it clear that Rostock-Lichtenhagen was not only the most extensive pogrom in post-war German history, but also represents a complex of different and interwoven solidarities that transcends the boundaries of individual communities.
Lichtenhagen is a complex of events. Nothing more and nothing less.
‘Eventisation’ of commemoration
There is one notable error that can be made in commemorating the pogrom: Rostock-Lichtenhagen 1992 is not a singular event, but one climax in a series of events, some of which having been largely forgotten. In addition to the attacks in Mölln, Solingen, Hoyerswerda, etc., there were countless racist, antisemitic, and antiziganist attacks and assaults throughout the reunified Federal Republic of the early 1990s (and later, of course), but these have hardly received any media attention. To regard Lichtenhagen as a singular event and not explicitly link it to all the others that took place in the early 1990s would be to trivialise it and them.
