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Riots of Rostock-Lichtenhagen: "If you hear cries from below"

2019-10-11T12:02:22.026Z


Flames blaze from refugee apartments, gawkers hoot and applaud the neo-Nazis - a shame for Germany. In August 1992, a right-wing mob in Rostock was able to attack foreigners almost undisturbed.



He did not forget that fear. "If there is only one more stretched concrete ceiling and you hear screams from below, see firelight and smell smoke, it does not go left and right, then you lose your courage someday."

Jochen Schmidt stood on August 24, 1992 in the so-called sunflower house on the Mecklenburger Allee in Rostock-Lichtenhagen, as residents and neo-Nazis put the apartment block on fire. As a guest of a ZDF camera team, he had accompanied xenophobic riots and was in the middle of it.

With about 150 former Vietnamese contract workers who lived in the house, and with colleagues Schmidt rescued to the eleventh floor, finally on the roof. "And then, everyone up there silently locked in with their lives, you just have to say that," he recalls.

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17 pictures

Rostock-Lichtenhagen: When the mob took over the rule

The pictures of the burning sunflower house went around the world and showed the ugliest side of the reunited Germany. These were the heaviest xenophobic riots in the history of the Federal Republic.

Stones, iron balls, incendiary devices

After the reunification and in the course of a heated asylum debate, which encouraged right-wing radicals, it came in the early nineties, a wave of violence with numerous attacks on individual foreigners and accommodations. In September 1991 hostels for refugees and contract workers were attacked in Hoyerswerda with Molotov cocktails and iron balls.

The excesses of Rostock-Lichtenhagen were another shocking climax of xenophobic violence. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern's central reception center for asylum seekers was located in the Sonnenblumenhaus in 1992. Asylum seekers had to register there before being assigned accommodation in this state.

SPIEGEL TV Chronology of riots - Rostock-Lichtenhagen 1992

For weeks, the place was overcrowded. The waiting people camped in front of the house - without toilets and without food. There were thefts in surrounding shops. Although local residents pointed to the bad conditions, those responsible did not react.

From August 22, the situation escalated, kicking off almost a full week of rioting. Young people and local residents gathered, hurling stones and incendiary devices at the house and the police. "In the beginning it was the local inhabitants, the young people, who were completely without prospects," says Ralf Mucha, SPD member of parliament and chairman of the local council.

"A prototype for right-wing violence"

Later, neo-Nazis from all over Germany joined. The police - miserably prepared, poorly equipped, abandoned by the politicians - did not get the situation under control. Between idleness, procrastination and headless acting she finally left the field to the mob and could not ensure the access of the fire brigade to the Sunflower house and the surrounding buildings; Right-wing extremists and onlookers blocked the way for the firefighters.

Thousands of people were able to fumble against foreigners almost unhindered, neo-Nazis set fire to bottles of fire in front of a hooting mob, and drunks raised their arms to the Hitler salute - scenes that went around the world. It was a triumph for the right-wing mob. And a shock to everyone else.

On 24 August, the authorities decided after a long delay to vacate the reception center. From then on, the violence of the neo-Nazis and the insults of thousands of gazers against the Vietnamese living in the neighboring rising. Several apartments were lit.

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8 pictures

Right-wing extremist attacks: Ugly Germany

Wolfgang Richter, at that time foreigners representative Rostocks, spent several days in the house. He recalls many conversations with residents who also said, "But we do not mean the Vietnamese, we've been living with them for ten years, but that did not help them, because once this xenophobic violence broke out, it did not make any difference . "

Ex-Hospitant Schmidt, today a reporter for the "Hessischer Rundfunk", says: "Rostock is something of a prototype for right-wing violence and how easily agitators manage to move masses."

Misdemeanors in stone

The meadow in front of the house, on which the scenes took place, is no longer there today. For many years, the area has been built south in front of the eleven-storey skyscraper - with a service center, a home improvement market and a parking lot. It has become the center of the district. There are shops, snack bars and doctors' offices.

"I refuse to say that Lichtenhagen is a focal point district, he is not," says SPD man Mucha. For example, with the shelter for refugees, there are no problems, "it is accepted, it is supported".

In the short chronicle of the Hanseatic city, the formative events of the city's history are noted. The events of 1992, however, are not mentioned, just as the death of Mehmet Turgut in 2004 - a murder attributed to the "National Socialist underground". "It is completely incomprehensible, as may be missing in 1992 and 2004 in such an enumeration," says Wolfgang Richter, Rostock's former aliens representative.

From 21st August, thematic steles will be inaugurated during a commemoration week in Rostock: at the Sonnenblumenhaus, at the town hall, in front of the editorial office of the "Ostsee-Zeitung", the police inspectorate and the left-wing "Jugendalternativzentrum". The art objects will henceforth be reminiscent of the transgressions and also of civil courage.

Source: spiegel

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