Rampage at the OEZ: New Sky documentary illuminates the background of the attack
Created: 07/20/2022, 09:12
By: Rudolf Ogiermann
The killing spree at the OEZ shook Munich.
Six years after the terrible attack, a new Sky documentary sheds light on the background.
Munich – I wished I had three hands,” says Hüseyin B. in the film with a trembling voice.
The witness to the rampage in Munich had tried to save Giuliano K., who had been shot several times - in vain, the 19-year-old bled to death in his arms.
One of nine people with a migration background who the 18-year-old David Ali S. killed indiscriminately on the evening of July 22, 2016 at the OEZ before shooting himself in the head.
Shortly before the sixth anniversary of the event, which tore deep wounds that have not yet healed in the families of the victims, the pay channel Sky will show the four-part documentary July 22nd - The Shots from Munich by author and director Johannes Preuss starting tomorrow.
Rampage at the OEZ: Social media triggered mass panic
These are images that have burned themselves into the collective memory of people in the state capital and far beyond - shaky mobile phone videos that show the perpetrator in outline, screaming people running for their lives, police officers at the limit.
However, the pictures also show the extent of the mass panic, which – triggered and fueled by social media – gripped the city within a short time and caused further injuries.
Up to 73 alleged shootings were reported to the police until finally, well after midnight, it became clear that there was only one crime scene - the one at the OEZ.
With a total length of almost four hours, there is – of course – much that is redundant in this production, which combines classic original images from back then, excerpts from the news, live reports and private videos with statements by eyewitnesses, police leaders, politicians and scientists.
And yet she also shows the events from a different perspective, which puts the politician's formula of the "attack on a peaceful Munich" in a slightly different light.
It was, as Die Schüsse von München suggests, a shooting spree with an announcement.
Flowers mark the spot in front of the OEZ where David Ali S. killed nine people on July 22, 2016.
© Sven Hoppe/dpa
Assassin David Ali S. was bullied by classmates: "I'll shoot you in the head"
Because Ali S., son of Iranian migrants, who gave himself the first name David, was a victim of bullying for years as a teenager, as friends from back then describe.
It can be gathered from their words that the school found no means of stopping the attacks by the alleged German-Turkish and German-Serbian classmates.
Probably the trigger of a radicalization process, at the end of which the young man ends up in right-wing forums, where he also bought the murder weapon.
The fact that David Ali S. admired the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, expressed fantasies of violence ("I'll shoot you in the head") and thoughts of revenge ("The day of reckoning will be inevitable") did not remain with his closest environment, which the film also shows hidden.
Jochen Köstler, one of the two producers of Die Schüsse von München, speaks of the need to “look behind the scenes of an act so that mere shock gives way to knowledge”.
In this sense, the Sky four-parter is far more than a chronology of the terrible events, but an analysis that is exemplary in this genre.
Rudolph Ogiermann