What can you do as a writer against right-wing agitation? Three PEN-writers could come up with something to support the victims of xenophobic and racist attacks. A view to Chemnitz.
Last weekend, the writers ‘ Association PEN was held in Chemnitz. You must tell the history in order to understand how symbolic this Writer.
26. August 2018 city in the third largest Saxon city of Chemnitz, it is celebrated and drank a lot. At three, Daniel H. sits on the edge of the Solid in the bridge street, next to the Monument of the giant Karl Marx head, as the two men with him to discuss this with you, your hands. Maybe it’s not about drugs, maybe. At the end of the 35-Year-old is not alive, he was killed-in stitches with multiple knives, a second man with life-threatening injured.
Murder or manslaughter, it is a cruel crime. Oddly, it is through the identity of the alleged perpetrators -. Fixed the 23-year-old Alaa S., a Syrian who is now in the Dresden court. The main suspect, the police well-known Iraqis, Farhad A., is advertised on the escape and international manhunt. He should have dropped together with his brother in Iraq.
Onslaught of the radical Right
At the beginning of September, right-wing parties on the March in Chemnitz, Germany, AfD, and Per Chemnitz demonstrate together with Pegida and neo-Nazi Hooligans. They roar their hatred against Foreign, Non-White, and journalists, with undisguised Nazi symbols, stretching his Arm for the Hitler salute. The pictures go around the world. The dispute whether one can speak of a witch hunt for foreigners, has political consequences.
Already on 27. August 2018 demonstrates the right-wing scene in Chemnitz, and it comes to xenophobic outbreaks of violence
Already on 27. August, the attacks on foreigners are increasing. Extreme right-wing go on the rampage in the city. They also attack the Local a German, the kosher Restaurant “Shalom”. It is not the first attack, told the owner Uwe Dziuballa, but one that causes significant damage. 42,000 euros of the renovation cost.
Attacks on foreign and Local
In the middle of the city on the edge of the Central shopping mile, the Persian Local “butterfly”. At the end of September, a few weeks after the attack on the Jewish Local, the attacked by former refugees-operated Restaurant of the radical Right, discs are going to break. Afterwards, the guests remain.
On 7. October is attacked the second Persian Restaurant in the city. Masked severely injured, the host of “saffron”, Masoud Hashemi needs to be treated in the hospital. Also this attack on the first seven months previously-opened Restaurant is the first, a disc was already put in earlier, a swastika on the wall lubricated.
The police investigations of these attacks have now been set. There is not enough evidence and no witnesses that could identify the perpetrators. The investigations by the land criminal police office on the case of “Mangal”. The upscale Turkish Restaurant has been at the 18. October twenty incendiary flared. Be a guest host Ali Tulasoglu lives since 1994 in Saxony. In 2017, he fulfilled the dream of his own restaurant. 350,000 euros of damage and the uncertainty of when he can open his Eatery ever again, not have expelled the father of a family from Chemnitz.
Tanja Kinkel reads in the Jewish Restaurant “Shalom”
“We are responsible for each other”
“If there is a lesson to be learned from the whole Horror of the story and the positive things of the last century, it is that we are all responsible for each other,” says Tanja Kinkel. “If we cease to believe in it, then the civilization, no matter what you can wrap up in this culture, really.” And the successful author of historical novels, it leaves in words. It deals with the practical support of the challenged Local and, therefore, to set a clear sign. Therefore she together with her colleagues readings in the city. The city, which on 9. March 2019 was advised by a minute of silence for a deceased neo-Nazi in the stadium of the local football club FC Chemnitz again in the headlines. “I asked all four of the restaurant owners,” says the PEN-the member of the Board, “but unfortunately, the ‘Mangal’ is not yet re-opened.”
Tanja Kinkel yourself las in the Restaurant of “Shalom” from various novels of their thirty-year publication history, a zig-zag course through the centuries. As a tribute to your host, you chose to start your in the high middle ages trading book “The game of the Nightingale” (2011), the second main character is a Jewish Doctor.
A Statement by the presence of
Nora Bossong was in the “saffron” poems and read from her novel, the Italian politician and philosopher Antonio Gramsci, “36.9 degrees”. The mood is calm, serene, seriously. Very large the crowd is, you would like to have seen more of Chemnitz in the Local. But the PEN-the Initiative is competing with a lot of other, simultaneous cultural events in the city.
Nora Bossong on your reading in the Restaurant “saffron”
Most listeners Eva Menasse in the Restaurant “the butterfly was able to gather”. The Berlin-based writer, has traveled on her birthday to Chemnitz, to read from her short story collection “animals in Advanced”. Your presentation garners a lot of laughs, only the local operator will remain with serious faces in the Background. “It wasn’t a question,” stresses the author, after reading that you wanted to show in Chemnitz, Germany flag: “You have to support people that something is happening. We can’t imagine such a thing at all, because to us it doesn’t happen, you destroyed our apartments, houses or shops. I really find that it is necessary to make a Statement with presence.”
You can feel comfortable in Chemnitz
There are in Chemnitz, a great scene, which promotes democracy and tolerance, and with initiatives such as “Welcome to Chemnitz” or “Protest,” the right-wing radicals. Also Uwe Dziuballa, one of about 600 Jews in Chemnitz, has become active, not only since the attacks to be Local, but since 1998. His latest project, “The kippah remains” tracked it for two years. “The history of my family in this area goes back to the 18th century. A century back, we are not only here to visit. I found it hard to bear, that you should hide as a Jew in Germany.”
A lot of Bands put on a great concert under the slogan “#we’re more” in Chemnitz, Germany, a sign against racism, xenophobia and violence
The characters, the set, the author and the PEN with your Initiative, not only supports the challenged Local. A lot more yet it serves the city itself. “We have seen Chemnitz as a very free town,” says PEN-Vice-President Ralf nest Meyer after the conference. “There were impassioned pleas for tolerance, from the mayor, Barbara Ludwig. We felt very comfortable here.” If on 1. June, as planned, Hooligan-tourists, and right-wing radicals in Chemnitz gather, it is to be feared, images of stretched arms will determine the hate-distorted faces and horizontally the image of the city in German, possibly even the international Public, hopefully. To the peaceful, tolerant, cheerful side of the city in Saxony.