 Welcome to our next talk. I can't remember that. The NSU complex today. There was a lot in terms of discussion about the murders by the National Socialist Underground, the NSU, a right wing terrorist in Germany. But there are a lot of questions that have never been asked. And there are also a lot of questions that don't actually want to hear the answers to these questions. And that's what the following talk is about. We have Carol Keller, she's our speaker, she's a member of NSU Watch. And her question for this talk is basically what now? Please give a round of applause to Carol. Well, thank you very much. I'm mailed for me as well. As mentioned, my name is Carol Keller from NSU Watch. NSU Watch is a country-wide anti-fascist association. We've existed since around 2012. After the existence of the NSU came out and became public, I also rehashed what that is about for our own memory later. So that came out around 2011. So at that point, anti-fascists across the country came together and basically went into their archives and put together all the information that they could find about this group at that point in time, about this neo-Nazi terror group. And this association basically became more formalized and became more steady when it became clear that different parliaments across the country would also have groups that would look into these questions and to this group. And especially when it became clear that there would be no official protocols, for example, for this big lawsuit, which at that point was still in the future. So at that point, we decided that part of our work would be to go watch these proceedings in Munich and basically write protocols. That's basically this country-wide anti-fascist network that exists until today. And by now, we're at the other end of the lawsuit, which means the NSU proceedings ended this year in Munich in July. But let's just quickly look at this, what happened and what we found out in 2011, what became public in 2011. At that point, it became clear that a series of murders that had been known under a different name before was actually a series of racist murders by neo-Nazis. This series, nine people with a migration background were killed and one German policewoman. And in addition to that, there were three explosive attacks and several attacks on banks. Until 2011, it wasn't clear. Nobody even looked into this direction of the far right. Instead, police primarily investigated the people who had survived these attacks, so relatives and family and friends of the victims. That's also what was primarily litigated in court in Munich. And that's also what came out in 2011. But we don't only talk about the NSU, but we talk about the NSU as a group and as a network, as a complex. And that's really what I want to talk about in this presentation because it's not just about the series of murders. It wasn't just neo-Nazis that committed these murders, but that the entire German society took part in the fact that the series of murders could happen and that the NSU basically remained undetected until 2011. On July 11th, 2018, there was a verdict after five years in the first proceedings with regards to the NSU. It was supposed to look at what I was talking about. I was showing you in the graphic earlier basically these ten murders, the explosive attacks, and the bank robberies. But it became clear very quickly, right at the beginning, and even before, that this NSU complex basically contains and encompasses much more. And that became obvious in court, especially through the work of people who are part of the people who are essentially suing together with the state. So these were primarily the families of victims who had a lot of, who had many different rights. They could also make statements, they could ask questions, and they could ask for evidence to be taken into account. So they really tried to do that and to show that this whole thing is about more than just these murders, that it's about society-wide racism and that we need to look at the police investigations that investigate the families rather than the actual murders, that we need to look at these neo-Nazi networks that enabled and supported these murders and that it's not just about these three people who committed the murders themselves. And the reason this was so difficult is because the people who actually wrote down the suit, which was basically the state, so the equivalent of a general attorney, simply included this assumption that the NSU was a group of three people that was isolated, did not have access to a big network, and that the state also was not involved in this murder series at all. And basically everything that happened as part of these proceedings had to fit into that narrative. So whenever these families tried to counter that narrative, they had to go against these strong actors. And it was also what essentially dominated a lot of the parliamentary inquiries that were set up across the country, which further illuminated in some ways the part the state had in this whole thing. For example, in the inquiry in the German Bundestag, the main parliament, but also in one of the federal state inquiries, there were clear statements made that the NSU was not just a group of three people, but it was a network. Here we can see the day the verdict was announced. We see some of the relatives of the murder victims and some of the survivors. And yeah, one of the survivors herself, they basically went out into the streets on the day the verdict was announced. Because all this knowledge that we've acquired over the past years was basically just shoved off the table the day the verdict was announced. So a lot of things were shown. We now know much more. And now these survivors and these relatives also know more and they have found the strength to talk about these murders, what it meant for them, what these investigations meant for them and what they did again for them. And in the end, there was a verdict that just simply didn't acknowledge any of these things. Basically, it was just a very brief recitation or recounting of these murders. So specifically these 10 murders. And that was about it. So there was no discussion of what happened to these families, nothing about racism, nothing about the German Agency for the Protection of the Constitution, which was involved in this whole thing. But it was the Fafassungsschutz. So it was essentially a verdict that didn't do justice at all to these things that were discussed as part of these proceedings. And so ultimately, it was a moment of triumph for the neo-Nazis that were accused as part of this trial, especially those that are still active in the neo-Nazi scene, especially Anton Ebinger and Ralph Wolling. One of these people could already basically leave the court freely that day. And Ralph Wolling could leave and simply return to the neo-Nazi scene a week later. So accordingly, neo-Nazis who were present in court that day really were jubilant and applauded this verdict. So what we also heard that day was the applause of a group of neo-Nazis. That also means that this court in Munich didn't consider it appropriate to really investigate right-wing terrorism and also put limits to this terror. That could have been part of this verdict as well to say this series of murders has to be punished severely. And that's not what happened on this day at all. But the worst thing really was that the judge didn't find any words for the relatives and the survivors, which is completely normal in other cases. You can basically say anything you want and these verdicts. And in many cases, it was talked about what these murders and these crimes meant. And that's something that didn't happen at all as part of this NSU trial. But nevertheless, as you say, there were some of these relatives that found the energy and the power to basically go out and lead an anti-fascist demonstration under the title that basically they were basically said that this is not over. And they demanded that the end of the trial, this whole NSU complex is not over as a whole, but that you need to go further. That means what we can take away from this trial and this day is much more than was written down as part of the verdict in the end. The trial and all these parliamentary inquiries that are happening were really influenced by this notion of what's also in my title. These are things that people in the Fafasungsschutz, the German Agency for the Protection of the Constitution, said that the police said that, neo-Nazis said that, and a lot of people said basically that they just can't remember what happened 15 to one year ago. So they have all these memory gaps that somehow appear independently with all of these people. But generally, that's different, right? As someone who's watching these parliamentary inquiries, we are, of course, remembering these things. And we remember what the relatives and the survivors say. We remember what these people who work for the government say, what these police people, these people from the police say, and what also what we learned about our society. And that's really our takeaway and that's the core of this presentation. What is our analysis or what is a possible analysis of the NSU complex which we can learn from, which we can remember, and which we can take with us to prevent something like this from happening again? Of course, that's one of our main aims and one of the main aims of our work, that murders like this can never happen again. And if they do happen, then they cannot remain undetected again for such a long time. And that it needs to be clear that this is right-wing terrorism. And that's, like I mentioned, the question, what do we know about the NSU complex? Like I mentioned, we talk about a complex and not just the NSU, because this is a very simple explanation because it's a complex topic, rather than just saying that there are a few new Nazis who have their ideology and follow their ideology and murder people because of their racist ideology. And to illustrate that, I have this graphic here, which I'm also, we're going to have some Zoom effects here later on. I hope that's going to work. It's not very pretty, but that maybe doesn't matter. What this is supposed to show you is that right-wing terrorism and the NSU, there's a societal relationship here, right? There's an interplay. Without these societal structures, the NSU would not have been able to work. And this series of murders may not ever have happened or would have been detected earlier. Or you may have been able to prevent these murders. A lot of these things are possible. So if just the middle part had existed in the middle, if only that had existed and only those people had murdered, then maybe things had played out very differently with all other societal actors acting differently. That's also a very rough picture of what we know about this. And there are many things we still don't know, but there are a lot of things that we found out over the past few years. So for one, we have the neo-Nazis of the NSU and their network, who essentially came up with the murders and executed them. And there are several things that we've learned about them over a few years, but it was also clear before that this whole neo-Nazi network exists and how it works. So the NSU didn't just come up with these things that they did themselves. Instead, they used concepts of right-wing terrorism, which have existed since at least 1945, and that have been developed further and further in the neo-Nazi scene. And have also been created and supported by these old Nazis, so it's really nothing new. And at the same time, right-wing terrorism is also something that didn't begin with the NSU, but there's definitely a clear continuity since 1945. That's also something that we've only been learning about over the past few years. For example, you had all these sentences in 2011 where people were like, what neo-Nazis, right-wing terrorism that exists? Of course, it exists. And that also existed before NSU and was going on before in very similar forms. And there's this core trio, Mundlos, Bunhat and Schepa, these three people in their socialization phase in the 1990s. They basically created a pretty broad network for themselves across the country. In particular, just after they essentially disappeared, we can actually name the people they worked with and the people who helped them hide from the police, specifically the people who helped them with their attacks and the explosive attacks in specific cities. Those are people we don't, we can't actually name yet. That's a pretty big open question that still drives us because we hope that we can answer it in the future. Who specifically are these people, these specific Nazis that supported the NSU in committing these crimes, that showed them where to commit the murders and that provided the weapons, things like that? That's an important question. And these are the neo-Nazis that essentially implemented these racist ideas that they had and essentially just followed through on the logic of these ideas and murdered people. And as I mentioned, we learned how they were socialized, how they were organized, and what they were thinking about. All of these are things that we now know about with a certain, like, relative degree of certainty, especially because it happened in the 1990s. And there's a lot of documentation and people who were, people who were anti-fascists at the time and looked into these people wrote down a lot of these things. So when the NSU started murdering people, committing ex attacks, of course, there were police investigations. These police investigations would have been able to look at the right wing scene in Germany and maybe consider the fact that they may have been right wing motivations and racist motivations behind these crimes. And they would have run into the neo-Nazi scene pretty quickly if they had done that. Because, of course, there was speculation and there were rumors and people were like, well, does right wing terrorism exist? And then the answer was always, well, of course not. But if it exists, then it's these three people. So even after 1989, nobody forgot that these people existed, right? After they disappeared, even though they had essentially disappeared, lived underground, people knew, the police knew about these three. But police didn't do that. And after 1998, when they moved from Jena to Chemnitz and moved underground, they also could have been arrested, but that also didn't happen. And so these police investigations have also been investigated very clearly and have essentially been taken apart in a very detailed way over the past few years, especially in the parliamentary inquiries that are going on. With a particular focus on some of these important points in time, especially the moment when they went underground in 1998, because there was essentially a raid of some of these houses. And Uwe Boonhardt, he was actually still there and he asked whether he could leave. And the policemen there basically just told him, yeah, you can go. And so he grabbed the others and they moved to Chemnitz. So we know these things in a lot of detail basically minute by minute. And separate from that, we obviously have the police investigations after the murders and the explosions and explosive attacks that were quite similar in the way that they were executed. So there was resistively connotated theses and they were actually looking for people based on these theses. So what do I mean by this? Officers looked at the fact that people with migrational background were attacked and were murdered. And based upon this, they thought maybe we're what could be a motive to kill these people. So they they came up with racist motivated theses. And they were like, Oh, it could be mafia or it could be based on a family feud, like blood revenge. So they came up with this world of ideas that we call racist because it is not the world of thought that police men and women like should come about when you have victims that are of white skin color. So that's why we call them racist and institutionalized racism racism that is part of an institution and bias and individual racism. And that by that I mean, we could see over the past few years of this individual officers that have made racist remarks in public and acted racistly in public. We know this because the files in the Committees of Inquiry reveal this and they show how these hearings were going if they were talking to relatives or people related to the crime. And when they were asking when they were asking these people and when when people relatives actually mentioned that this could be motivated by racist and fascism that was put aside and shoved of the table by investigating police officers. And they then kept pushing for things such as family feud in Cologne, for example, no, no, Endortment. There was a witness that said that she saw the attack. I said she said, Well, it was either Nazis or junkies. And then in the protocol in the end, only junkies ended up in the in the official documentation of the hearing. And massively, actually, the family members of the people attacked were the ones who were being framed. So they would show them images of other women and they would be like, Oh, this is, this is the woman that your husband has a second family with which is actually were all lies and untrue. And they were trying to push relatives into into basically revealing what was going on. So this quote shows quite well and is quite revealing and telling in front of the backdrop of the killing of people in our cultural realm is considered a big taboo. It's we can deduct that the perpetrator is the perpetrator is acting upon a norm and a system of value that is far from ours. Based on our historic legacy, this is a bit of stretch and it's quite rough to take in. But this is the remark that's been that was being made within the investigation files. And the police did not leave any stone unturned in Hamburg, for example, they actually consulted somebody from Iran, who was supposed to get in contact with a deceased in Nuremberg. They were running doing a kebab shop, and we're paying money for people to protect them. They were trying to get into those kind of scenes. And every time somebody raised the question whether or not this could be a racist or right wing motivated crime, they would always claim there's no proof of that. While the truth actually is that for these racistly connotated thesis is that we're driving the investigation, there was no proof whatsoever. So for example, in the case of Ender Schimshek, somebody from prison was announced, like got in touch with the police as an informant, he's like, yes, he was him and Ender Schimshek would go to Netherlands together to go and buy drugs. And that was something from an informant that was completely made up. And then he could get an early release. And this was given a lot of attention from the police and the investigative team. So that was a way of balancing out anybody claiming that this could be potentially a racist motivated crime. So until 2011, there was a very straight way of direction of investigation. There was always, there was never the idea that this these could be crimes that are racist, particularly motivated. In 2006, there was actually a big fight within the country wide investigative team. And then they went back to their racist thesis driven investigation. So based upon this, police and any police, all the police officers were basically carrying along the NSU as a complex because themselves, if they had considered better methods of investigation, they could have stopped. And we're talking about institution institutionalized racism here because there's multiple examples. And there's one in particular, there's three cases where they have a new starting point for investigation where they could have gone into a different direction. There was the explosive attack in Cologne. There was a murder case in Cologne. And since 2011, we now know that these crimes belong to one group of perpetrators in 2011 that wasn't clear yet. And you could investigate these crimes independently, they weren't connected yet. But in all three cases, and police investigation was driven, where they were literally like they were getting undercover agents into these families that were trying to uncover these big criminal family clans, ultimately. The next cycle that we're looking at here is the media coverage. That is completely going in line with the investigation of the police. They were obviously echoing what police was releasing as statements. But then they would add their own racist fairy tales on top of this. For example, there's this article by the German newspaper der Spiegel dark world parallel worlds. It's from the summer of 2011. It's six months before the NSU was actually uncovered. And this article works. There's this kind of idea. There's this hypothesis if there's a one singular psychopath that that kills Turkish people because he hates them so much. That's one thesis. But that's obviously not plausible. And then there's two or three pages that are basically a racist idea world, where there's talks of dark parallel worlds, where they speak to informants. And they basically confirmed that this series of Mada is a series of Mada that stems from the reasons that the police were actually suspecting, for example, mafia background. That was never actually worked up on like nobody ever actually went back and and and they were like, never really looked at who did they really talk to who were the informants of these articles. They were just believed because they were reconfirming a world of thought that was in people's heads and that was never really worked up in hindsight. And at the same time, there was an extra layer in within the media world, the from the so called during our murder cases, murder series is a word in itself racist, without knowing that this case, like murder series has actually got a racist background. Even in 2011, this was something that we could have criticized as racist. And that never took place. That never happened. At the same time, we had different medias, such as also the speaker that were writing about the right wing terror and how it actually works. They had the same knowledge. They had the same data. They had quite an understanding of how racist and right wing terrorism works. They all knew if anybody from that scene, as those three, if anybody in that's within that scene was capable of doing this, this was Montluss, Boonhardt and Schaper. And that was known since 1998 because they had disappeared in that time. But even that like that knowledge about right wing terror and the series of murder cases was never brought together and connected. And it probably would have made a difference if the media coverage had been different. If they had questioned, had done more research on their own, more investigative research, if they had thought more in the direction of a racist motive, for example. And this also goes for the society as a whole. I mean, I know this sounds a bit abstract. But what I want to say with this is that the same goes for all of us, all of us we make up society, the left of the society, the anti fascist of the society. We, the they do not question this, they realize the series of murders, but they do see they see the media coverage, but they take it as the right word and they take what's being covered and they don't listen to people who are affected by this and who are becoming a lot more public and who are constantly pointing out potential racist motives. Relatives and survivors continuously try to point the direction towards the neo nazi scene. And in 2006, the relatives of come together for two demonstrations in Kassel and in Dortmund, they go out to the street and they ask for no 10th like they claim like they they ask for not another murder, not a 10th victim. And they're asking for the police investigation to investigate in this direction. And there was a couple thousand people that went out and took it to the street. But 2006, what's parallely happening in Germany, the German World Cup in Germany. And we remember it really well that slogan, the world's welcomed within the circle of friends. And obviously, this demonstration in Dortmund took place while there was a soccer game going on a football game. And so this, the demonstration had to go through an empty street and and, and was completely unheard and unnoticed. And again, we the thought comes about what would have happened if that had been heard. And I think that would have made a great difference. And it could have made a great difference if a society anti fascists media, if they had just paid more attention, if they had gotten together with the relatives and could have maybe given a bigger voice to their thought, what if these murders are racistly driven by racist ideology. So 2006 does not just signify in hindsight, obviously, this is the breaking point, this is the the the re growing of the new like of the nationalism on the one hand, like the German flags can be shown again in German streets. And then at the same time in hindsight, like this World Cup does kind of look a bit flawed considering that this is also the time where the right wing terrorism is flourishing. And this switch of thought, short term switch of thought. And that was also something that in 2006 where they were having conflicts within the investigative team. That was also the same time. So the same time the World Cup comes back into play. They decided not to make it to public this kind of conflict internally. In times of of the World Cup and the the reputation of Germany as a nation all over their world, you couldn't that it wasn't good publicity to potentially have this idea circling around. So within this group of investigation, there was there was this grander idea of this image of Germany and Germany hosting the World Cup and the world being welcomed in the circle of friends. And then obviously, there is the Federal Office of the protection of the Constitution that plays a very big role and its very own role within this whole case and complex. The protection, the protection of the Constitution has a lot of actual informants within the inner circles of the NSU. So those are informants that base like for money act as informants, and they report to the police and get paid for it. And we know that these informants did notify the police of the most important things. First of all, they did notify them that they are in Chemnitz, and that they are getting guns to execute robberies. So 1998 to 2000, those were information that was known amongst the office, the Federal Office of the protection of the Constitution. And that did not lead to those three to be stopped or caught. And what we don't know, however, is if the Federal Office of the protection of the Constitution did know about the murder series itself. What we do know is that this office did know since 2011 has massively intervened with with the investigation and they were destroying files and very quickly after the NSU became known. So on the 4th of November in 2011, the NSU came like was was known that they were the ones who were responsible for this series. And on the 11th of November is the fast day where files are being destroyed on a massive scale. So there's a bunch of files that were that are being kept secrets that are put under a seal of the next 120 years because of specific security levels. And also employees of these offices of the protection of the Constitution, and their inquiries happen to not remember anything. And for a month, they just kind of blank out and they blackout and they they are, if it's not something that they have to keep secret, they can't remember basically. So the big question in this regard is what does the what did the office of the protection of the Constitution know? And why did they act the way that they did? And why did they not act that the way that they did not act? So why did they not pass on information? But this is not the main point. A lot of times, when you think about the NSU complex, the office of the protection of the Constitution is something they were being shady. And that's why the NSU could continuously execute murders. We do not believe that's the case. We believe it's a societal problem that is going above all the layers. All these layers were carrying the NSU and they could have intervened and could have made a difference. And they could have, and this is where the arrow and the on this is kind of missing, they could have also undercut the the investigation and the actions of the office of the protection of the Constitution. They, if any of these layers had more actively stepped in, that could have actually made a difference. And this is something that counts for all the layers within this kind of circle. And the the most horrific thing is that the NSU was actually quite aware of this. They were quite aware how the how the series of murders was dealt with, and how there was investigations, framing relatives and and survivors and how media covered these cases, and how these how the survivors and relatives were talked about in a very racist and biased way. So the NSU actually has a little archive documenting their murder series. So we do know that they were quite aware of and that must have kind of given them a new level of energy. They didn't just kill these people. But beyond that, they also also the police is now investigating these families. And the whole society is echoing this kind of behavior. So the NSU NSU also was aware of the demonstration in 2006. And that's one of the most horrific things about the video from 2011, where they're claiming these murders for them. The video footage of the doc of the demonstration from 2006 is actually part of that proclamation where they they proclaimed that they were responsible for these murders. And the societal circle around the NSU was obviously not just the tight circle of neo nazi friends, but they lived in neighborhoods in Chemnitz and Zwickau. And especially the neighbors in Zwickau were not organized neo nazis in the sense that we think of them. Those were regular people with regular points of views is how they claimed that front of on trial. And these normal point of views. It was quite normal to make racist remarks. It was quite normal to have Hitler statues in your little party seller and have them on display. And that means that something that we can only speculate about. But in these neighborhoods, must have meant that they didn't need to hide who they were. And they didn't have to hide when they were making racist remarks. It was actually part of being part of those neighborhoods. And at the same time, that also means and it could potentially mean that they felt strengthened by these remarks and by this kind of atmosphere. In the 1990s socialized. There was a massive, massive shift to the right, especially in Germany, with the programs, especially in Rostock and where there were an in moon where there were fire attacks. And this kind of societal racism must have given them power and invigorated them. And they in Zwickau, they could feel that kind of being reconfirmed that this is a widespread point of view within society. And at the same time, beyond this, and beyond that's not obviously, you don't only need neo-Nazis for this kind of terrorism, it in reverse, this also tells us where we have room to act. So it shows us what we can learn from it to avoid right wing terrorism. And what are the things that what are the things that what we could see in the past few years is that we have a few actors that haven't learned much from the NSU complex, and are not really willing to learn. In the past few weeks, we had the scandal about the NSU 2.0, where within the Frankfurt police department and in the department in the police in Hessen, there's actually racist structures within the police departments themselves. We can see that the office for the protection of the Constitution still is unable to, and obviously not willing to stop and put an end to neo-Nazis and that media coverage. Yes, well, it's swing in this way and that way. So what's left for us is that we have to learn from the NSU complex and that we are the ones who have to change our ways of acting and our patterns of thought so that we as a layer can play a different role in the case of right wing terrorism. This is something that is for all sorts of right wing terror that's within society. So based on that, we have a few perspectives, possible perspectives for the future. What does that mean? How can we how should you change your behavior? What can we learn from this NSU complex? Obviously, every person needs to know that for themselves, but I think there are a few starting points that there are and that we can give you. So for one, of course, there are initiatives that directly concern themselves with the NSU complex itself. And for example, that essentially force people to remember and compel people to remember. I think one thing that we do one anti fascist task that we have is that the things that happened aren't forgotten. That we remember the murder victims of the NSU that we don't forget that people basically will remember these attacks for the for the remainders of their lives and that they will be influenced by these attacks. Something that was created over the past few years is that there are regular memorials in the places where these crimes happened. Different ways of memorials and remembering are there. There are protests, there are plaques. There are statues. So that also depends on what the city allows on those places that depends on what the family wants on those places. So of course, that looks very different in every single instance. But of course, that's something that's extremely important. One thing that we see on top here is a demonstration in castle last year. You remember, it looks very similar to the no 10th victim demonstration. And now it's called no more victims. And that also essentially addresses the fact that there is a shift to the far right in society right now and that neo nazis might feel supported and strengthened. Of course, there's this whole question of are all neo nazis like are our racists, even if not all racists, maybe neo nazis, they feel supported by that. And there's a general societal climate that supports them. And especially in these conditions, we need to say no more victims. Then down there, there's a remembrance bank for Mehmet Turgut, who was murdered in Rostock. And that's also something that the city of Rostock also supported because it was also something that the family wanted. And over here, we see a plaque for Ismail Yashar. That's not an official plaque paid for by the city. So this is a Nuremberg. But this was put there by an anti fascist initiative that takes care of these memorials happening, these remembrance happening because these plaques are destroyed, taken away, stolen regularly. And so someone needs to make sure that it stays there. So one thing is remembering. And another thing is implementing the demands of the victims of survivors and victims families as far as possible. So in many cases, the families demand these things being investigated and being brought to light. But for example, in Kassel, the family of Ali Yoskat also demands that the city, the street where their son was murdered, that the street is renamed into Halit Street for all Halit's and to prevent any other Halit from being member, from being murdered for racist reasons in this street that's currently called Dutch Street. The city is currently refusing to do this. Instead, they renamed a plaza very close. And they're basically saying, oh, that's enough in terms of us taking responsibility. Simultaneously, the city is now at a point where they're essentially saying, we're kind of retreating from these official memorials. And instead, there's going to be a science price for people who work on things related to the NSU. But basically at this point, it's up to activists to implement this demand and to support it. And that's also something that happens repeatedly. For example, last year, there was a pretty big, important fair in Kassel. And people, essentially the map that attendees of this fair God had renamed this Dutch Street into Halit Street. And very specifically, this is also something that needs to continue to happen over the coming few years, remembering and also essentially testing and trying out to what extent we as a society can specifically implement the demands that survivors and victims families have. One other demand of some of these relatives, but also one of our core demands is, of course, the further investigation of these things and these murders. So there are all these open questions, right? The neo-Nazi network, what the federal office for the protection of the Constitution did, what the police, what government institutions did, what, what about that, right? When are we going to have answers to these questions? When are these things going to be investigated? And because of that, there are several initiative, further initiatives that essentially demand further investigations, specifically also for the murder of Suleyman Tashkopry, who in this initiative in Hamburg essentially demands a parliamentary inquiry, because Hamburg for now is the last federal state where one of these murders happened that hasn't implemented, put in place a parliamentary inquiry. Of course, we've learned over the past few years that these inquiries are not a panacea, they're not going to solve everything. That doesn't mean that you're going to know everything about these murders afterwards after having an inquiry. But of course, it's one way and it's one means that you can implement something you can do in order to and also where the federal states and this particular case, the city state Hamburg has responsibility to take responsibility for what happened in their city and essentially put these inquiries into place. They renamed a street and the Senate officially apologized but they basically said that they don't need an official inquiry with the same reasoning that other states such as Bavaria also used, which was, well, of course, this is important, but as long as we don't have any new information we can't put in place a parliamentary inquiry. And because of this, it's basically up to civil society and civil society initiatives to push for these investigations and really demanded, but also to push this investigation forward ourselves, which obviously is also something that we consider our task as anti-fascists, as NSU Watch and other groups that our own contribution to these investigations. We also should be doing that, right? That's also part of our task. In the very beginning, just after we found out about the NSU, it started that many anti-fascists essentially went into their archives, found this information, did some research, and that's never stopped since then. That's also how we see ourselves as NSU Watch, right? We're not just watching but we're also actors and we're part of this investigative process into the NSU complex. And, for example, into the question, into which of these open questions we may be able to answer as a society, what might be easier to answer is the question about the neo-Nazi network, then rather the question of why the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution acted the way it acted, but I'm actually pretty optimistic that we might actually get closer to concrete and specific answers to this question and we can see that the demands for clarity and for investigations haven't ceased since the announcement of the verdict. For some people this may have been the end of the NSU complex, but for many it wasn't. And then on top of that there are also other initiatives where I also think this is what it could look like to learn from the NSU complex as an initiative and as a civil society, which is not just to deal directly with the NSU complex itself, but to deal with other potential racist murders. For example, there's the Backtouch Initiative in Berlin, which deals with the murder of Burak Bektash, who was murdered 2012 in public just outside on the street. Burak Bektash was standing outside with his friends in Berlin Neukölln and there was a white man who simply shot them and without a word left. Bektash did not survive this attack and in Neukölln until now they are neo-Nazis and there is a lot of evidence that there this may have been a racist murder, right? But this is something that hasn't been cleared up at all until now, but this initiative is fighting together with his family for this murder to be investigated. And so they've already been able to get the statue, which is essentially a memorial for him. So this is a case where an initiative is working with the people who were affected and the victims' families and the families are not left alone. So before 2011, working together with these relatives and getting something like this memorial, I think 2011 really made a big difference, right? Then there are other initiatives that really are trying to illuminate the history of right-wing terrorism in Germany since 1945. So these are specific initiatives that after 2011 started to look at this continuity and try to illuminate this continuity. Specifically, here is an initiative from Hamburg called Initiative Remembering Ton Lan and the first name I couldn't get, apologies, and which wants to remember two the two victims of the arson attack in Hamburg, which was this arson attack was implemented by a right-wing group. We got a lot of attention. The two victims were, I think, Vietnamese immigrants if I remember them correctly. And after this group heard about this arson attack, founded itself and also started working together with relatives and victims' families and they are fighting for a place and a location for remembrance in Hamburg. And like that, there's an increasing number of right-wing terror attacks from the past that we are beginning to remember. And at least on the left, these things are being remembered as part of a collective memory. And especially these attacks that had been forgotten for a very long time. And like that, it's also possible to show that right-wing terrorism is not just these individual cases that are isolated from all these other things but that there's a clear continuity where the people committed these murders always use similar concepts, similar ideas and essentially build on and learn from each other based on this racist ideology. And then here, this picture is also from Hamburg, which is kind of just like a general picture to show you the train station FEDEL. In December 2017, there was an explosive attack there. And it was very, it became very clear, very quickly on social media that this could have been a right-wing attack. Because FEDEL is where you essentially enter two quarters of Hamburg Court FEDEL and Wilhelmsburg, where there are a lot of people, and a lot of people who have a migration background or enter our left wing live in these parts of the city. And so many people pointed out, well, this could have been a right-wing attack. And one of the reasons they could say this is the way right-wing terrorism works is that terrorism often happens without confession letters. Even if media and German police believe until today that you can recognize right-wing terrorism, if there's a swastika somewhere, no, you can recognize them by looking at who may have been targeted, who may have been the population groups that may have been targeted by this attack. And if there is congruence with right-wing ideology, then it could have been right-wing terrorism. And there are many cases where there's overlap in the way they proceed in committing their crimes. For example, here there was an explosive that may have reminded you of the group Freitheil, which used stimuli explosives. And because the explosive included screws, which is also something that was done in the case of the NSU, so choice of victims and their parallels in terms of the way they proceeded and then the way they actually implemented the explosives, which is why many people have said, oh, they may have been a far-right background here. The person responsible was arrested, who was a well-known neo-Nazi who already tried in the 90s, who murdered in the 90s for right- wing reasons. And so that's just another indicator that this was right-wing terrorism. Because of that, you could see who reacted and how did they react. Police essentially played it down and was like, oh, no, he's not a neo-Nazi anymore, because he's not part of an organization anymore, and he is now just a drinker. As if that somehow meant that he couldn't be someone who drinks and is a neo-Nazi at the same time. And so that was essentially the reasoning of the Hamburg police in that instance. At the same time, there was essentially no report. There were no reports that really mentioned the background of this person. And now that the trial is proceeding here, as proceeding, there was also a group that essentially watched and followed the proceedings. And in the end, the verdict was that he had to go to prison for 10 years for attempted murder. And the court considered a racist motive for very, considered it very, very likely, even though there was no definitive proof. So in this case, it was possible to really point out that this wasn't an unpolitical or a political attack, but that really was right wing terrorism. And that's also, I think, is a lesson we have learned from the NSU complex. And so we can also see that social media are extremely important here, where once police simply say that there is no right wing background, that people don't believe this anymore, that people put up evidence to the contrary, and that society can investigate and illuminate the fact that right wing terrorism still exists. Another thing that we also still need to learn is that we need to counter the current right wing shift in our society. There are obviously a lot of discussions about how we can do that. Obviously, we also don't have the correct answer for how that might work, how you might successfully really prevent this further shift to the right of our entire society, because ideally, you maybe want to reverse it or at least hold it in its step. But so far, there is no clear way of doing that. But I think one thing that we learned from the NSU complex is that the only thing that neo-Nazis and right wing people really understand is if they are being given limits and if it becomes very clear that something is not acceptable. That's obviously also where you see where society can show that these are borders, that these are areas of non-acceptable behavior. And that's where you can see how far to the right a society has drifted as well. Unfortunately, there's no clear answer here yet. But considering the NSU as a backdrop, this is really one of the most important things. And then, of course, it's not over. The NSU complex is not over. It's not resolved. This really continues to be our perspective. A lot of these questions haven't been answered. A lot of the demands of the victims' relatives haven't been implemented. The promise to investigate and illuminate what happened, all of these promises have been broken. So basically, it's now up to us to maybe fulfill these promises at least to some extent and to continue to say that the NSU complex is not something that is done with, but it's something that needs to continue. We need to look into it. We need to find answers. We need to implement these demands. And we really need to counter this whole of society racism that helped and supported and carried the NSU in its murders. And we need to counter this racism and ultimately abolish it. Yes. Thank you, Kara, for this great talk. We have very, very short time for one or two questions. And to be fair, I would like to start with a question from the internet. Based on the lack of investigation, the flawed investigation, do the investigators need to fear anything? Not so far. Neither for the neo-Nazi network nor for members of government institutions. They haven't just not been any serious consequences. There are people in government institutions that have been named specifically in members of the police and the Office of the Protection for the Constitution. These people have been named but we haven't been able to see any consequences there, not even to mention that there have been suit or anything, right? And so basically the AG so far have said that the state has not done anything wrong in a criminal or legal way. I don't think that's correct, but it doesn't look like there will be any consequences. But of course we need to ask for those. And then we take one last question from the audience, microphone number two. Yes, hi. A couple months ago, there was an attack on the Bavarian train track. There was a metal rope that was put amongst the track. And there was a proclamation in Arabic language. And the police investigation afterwards revealed that this potentially could be part of the right wing terror, actually a right wing terror act based on your experience, false flag. Do you know of any attacks where people actively aimed to put this on somebody else's back? Well, yeah, that's one of those specific strategies of wearing terrorism that they essentially implement false flag operations, that they commit an attack and then pretend like this attack essentially came from the left or came from or was permitted by Islamists. And that's how they essentially further further support and insight societal tension and societal opinions, racist opinions and essentially try to further shift society to the right. And there was this attack on the train station in Bologna in Italy that was exactly this kind of false flag operation, which for a very long time was considered a left wing terror attack, but which actually turned and which actually led to the far right getting more votes in elections. So the strategy actually worked, which is also what Francois was planning to do, who he was a right wing soldier in the German army who was planning an attack and who was essentially had registered himself as a Syrian refugee and who was apparently probably planning a similar false flag operation. Specifically, this attack that you mentioned, there was a similar attack in Berlin a few days ago, which was exactly the same type of attack on exactly the same part of the train network with a flyer in Arabic, which also could have been a false flag operation. And that's also exactly what we try to bear in mind and something that we always try to look at and where we push for investigations into these things because people need to notice this and people need to know that this is a possibility where it's really important that we stay on the ball and essentially see these things and identify them and point them out. Thank you guys so much for the questions and obviously also for the answers. Thank you guys for listening in with us and bearing with us. If you want to give us feedback, you can do so via Twitter at C3lingo and.