Chemnitz gets an NSU documentation center – temporarily

A “years-long civil society struggle”, as Khaldun Al Saadi puts it, is approaching a major milestone. Activists, initiatives and associations have been campaigning vehemently for years to comprehensively investigate the complex surrounding the neo-Nazi network National Socialist Underground (Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund, NSU): With a pilot project for an NSU documentation center in Saxony, the project is now taking shape. The first memorial rooms are to be built in Chemnitz and Zwickau from 2025.

Al Saadi, who was born in Chemnitz, is part of the project management team for the pilot project and is also involved in the Open Society Initiative, which is responsible for the overall management of the project. In mid-April, the participants have presented the project in Chemnitz, which Al Saadi sees as a “mammoth task” that can only be accomplished jointly.

Relatives of victims speak out

A voice message from Gamze Kubaşık, who apologized as a podium guest, underlines the need for a reappraisal. Her father, Mehmet Kubaşık, was shot dead by NSU members in Dortmund on April 4, 2006. “Justice can only be achieved if we are given space to remember,” she says. The crimes, which include nine murders as well as bomb attacks and bank robberies, must be understood as part of German history. “My father and the other victims should never be forgotten,” says Kubaşık. This requires places for discussion, networking and, in view of the questions that still remain unanswered, academic work.

This is exactly what is to happen in the pilot documentation center. At the end of February 2024, the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, BpB) presented a feasibility study and described what a network system of places of remembrance could look like. Considering the attacks throughout Germany, the commemoration needs a “multi-locality” that also addresses regionally specific issues, says BpB President Thomas Krüger:

In view of the plural target groups and diverse tasks of a future documentation center on the NSU complex, such a network system offers the possibility of pursuing very specific aspects in a more specialized manner and with a greater division of labour.

The aim of a documentation center is explicitly not to create a museum, as State Secretary Juliane Seifert emphasizes. The focus is much more on reappraisal, remembrance and the future, for example through:

• A digital archive on right-wing terrorism in Germany
• Political education to create vigilance (including for police officers)
• A meeting point for young people and school classes

The pilot project in Saxony could provide a starting point for this. Jörg Buschmann from the association regional workplaces and services for education, advice and democracy (Regionale Arbeitsstellen und Angebote für Bildung, Beratung und Demokratie, RAA – Sachsen e.V.) has meetings and networking events in mind. Further research or symposia could shed light on the background and causes of right-wing terrorism. “The aim is to better understand continuities and to raise awareness of the issue of right-wing violence,” he says. In the same way, the East German experience can be taken up with the so-called “baseball bat years”, for example, or East German migration history can be considered.

Nationwide need for education

BpB President Krüger also makes it clear that the issue is not specific to East Germany. Rather, a “trail of blood of right-wing terrorism” runs through the Federal Republic, whether in Mölln, Solingen, Lübeck or the Oktoberfest attack in 1980. Therefore, such a project must be broadly based, and Chemnitz has a “legitimate place” in the network concept as the NSU trio’s retreat.

However, the main location of the documentation center is to be outside Saxony. “If it was in Chemnitz, it would not be in the interests of those affected and therefore not in our interests either,” emphasizes Al Saadi on the podium. “However, due to the virulent threat situation for people marked as migrants, Saxony is not a place that victims and relatives could imagine visiting regularly,” according to a corresponding partial report by the University of Göttingen. They were much more interested in places that were designed to be inviting and that placed a positive emphasis on the life and migration history of those affected. The BpB project group is pursuing two goals in this process:

• A traveling exhibition to educate people throughout Germany about the NSU terror and to commemorate the terrorist attacks.
• A digital, didactic package: Existing and new material is to be brought together in such a way that it can be used for school lessons or extracurricular educational programs, for example, and is always accessible.

From the point of view of those involved in the project, the reappraisal must continue. “We must not draw a line under the investigations and the social reappraisal,” says Lydia Lierke, project manager at “Open Process” (Offener Prozess). For five years, the project has been pooling initiatives and information on coming to terms with the NSU crimes in Chemnitz, Saxony and nationwide.

Many questions about the NSU and its network are still unanswered, while many young people no longer know anything about the NSU trial, which only began eleven years ago. “The NSU complex is a turning point in German post-war history,” Lierke emphasizes the significance. There is also a need for places of and for migrant perspectives, where unfulfilled hopes and state failures become visible. A traveling exhibition developed in the project will be transferred to the pilot documentation center.

Juliane Seifert, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior and for Home Affairs:

The crimes of the NSU had changed the country and destroyed lives: “They still shape the lives of the victims’ families today.” It is a central concern of the Federal Government to “comprehensively process and document” the NSU complex together with the relatives of the victims. It shows how dangerous right-wing extremism was in Germany and can still be today. This should neither be relativized nor downplayed. The state and the authorities have a special responsibility here. “It is clear that they have made terrible and serious mistakes and omissions in the past,” emphasizes Seifert. At the same time, society has not been vigilant enough. In order to learn the right lessons, awareness must be raised and bitter truths accepted.

Katja Meier, Saxon State Minister of Justice and for Democracy, Europe and Equality:

Various actors in Saxony have been working for years to deal with the NSU complex, Meier acknowledges, “there is a huge civil society commitment here in the Free State of Saxony, which has been dealing with the NSU complex for years” and at the same time recalls: “Here in Chemnitz, the NSU was able to rely on a network that carried and supported it for years, some of which still exists today.” The same applies to her home town of Zwickau. Especially as the right-wing extremists committed eleven robberies here and procured weapons and vehicles. “They were able to live an undisturbed life here,” says the Minister of State. The state of Saxony therefore shares responsibility for a critical reappraisal of the events, which was set out in the coalition agreement in 2019 and underlined with financial resources. The pilot documentation center in conjunction with the title of Capital of Culture 2025 offers an opportunity for Chemnitz and the region to counter the right-wing protests in 2018 and the international headlines of that time with something positive.

The opening of the building on Augustusstrasse in Chemnitz is planned for 2025, when the city is hoping for numerous visitors as European Capital of Culture. Funding for the pilot documentation center has been secured for two years for the time being. The federal government and the state of Saxony are each funding the project with two million euros.

Foundation as a long-term solution

In order to secure long-term – and above all independent – funding, those involved hope that a foundation financed by the federal government can be set up to support the center, adds Lierke in an interview with On the Ground.

However, in order to implement the network concept as described in the feasibility study, significantly more investment is required: excluding rental and operating costs or the conversion and renovation of a property, the BpB is investing around 38 million euros from 2024 to beyond 2027.