It was a beautiful day – we wanted to see the Wiesn with its colourful lights.
Robert Höckmayr (formerly Platzer),
survivor of the bomb attack on the Oktoberfest in Munich 1980
__ Crime scene of the bomb attack on the Oktoberfest inMunich, September 26, 1980 | © Werek/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo
Far-right Terrorism 1945 until Today
Right-wing terrorism is a threat in Germany and around the world, with violence directed against individuals and particular population groups and thus ultimately against the society as a whole.
Right-wing terrorists plan and carry out attacks, assaults, and murders. Their aim is to weaken the state and society and generate a climate of fear.Far-right terrorism is rooted in a far-right extremist ideology, which reaches into mainstream society. Each and every one of us has sufficient influence in our immediate environment to reject such positions, to contribute to raising public awareness and to show solidarity with the victims of far-right terrorism.
Scrollytelling on the exhibition at the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism | April 18 to July 28, 2024 | Max-Mannheimer-Platz 1, 80333 Munich | nsdoku.de | The exhibition is curated by the Memorium Nuremberg Trials
The events described here are intended as examples of the far-right terrorist attacks that have been committed worldwide since 1945. Here we would like to give center stage to the victims, their families, and their stories as well as to all those affected in other ways by far-right violence.
For our Scrollytelling we have selected some excerpts from the exhibition Far-right Terrorism: Conspiracy and Radicalization – 1945 until Today and expanded them, with a special focus on Munich.
Der Ton kann über das Lautsprecher-Symbol in der Navigationsleiste wieder deaktiviert werden.
Terror against the democratic state
Far-right terrorists reject a pluralist society. Their terrorist activities aim to weaken the democratic state which guarantees this societal model. They believe that politicians no longer represent the interests of their own “people” and therefore systematically target politicians or state authorities. A central issue is usually the state’s policy towards refugees or its critical appraisal of Nazi crimes.
Politicians and public for a long time did not always recognise far-right terrorism for what it was and were slow to respond to the far-right terrorist threat or even sought to play it down.
Attack at the Oktoberfest
12 year old Robert Platzer went to the Oktoberfest with his parents and four siblings that on September 26, 1980. The family were on their way home when a bomb exploded just a few meters away. Robert Platzer, his siblings Wilhelm and Elisabeth and his parents survived the explosion but were seriously injured. His younger sister and brother, Ilona und Ignaz, were killed. They were seven and six years old.
The family was destroyed by their experience of the attack. Robert’s sister Elisabeth took her own life in 1994 at the age of 24 and his brother Wilhelm died the same way in 2008 at the age of 42. Robert Höckmayr still has 26 fragments of metal in his body to this day. He has had 42 operations. Höckmayr, now 54, spent decades fighting for recognition and financial compensation.
__ Robert Platzer with his mother Katharina and his sister Elisabeth, c. 1979 1979 | © Robert Höckmayr
The mortar shell filled with more than 1.3 kg of explosives went off at 10:19 pm in a trash basket by the main entrance to the Oktoberfest. A far-right terrorist attack left 13 people dead and 221 injured, some of them seriously.
Gabriele Deutsch, Robert Gmeinwieser, Axel Hirsch, Markus Hölzl, Paul Lux, Ignaz Platzer, Ilona Platzer, Franz Schiele, Angela Schüttrigkeit, Errol Vere-Hodge, Ernst Vestner, Beate Werner
It took only a day for the police to complete their investigation and for the scene of the crime to be cleared. Then the Oktoberfest continued. The police investigation initially assumed that the attacker had been acting alone and did not have a political motive. But even at the time eye-witness accounts and evidence pointed to possible accomplices and a political motive.
___ A card commemorating Ignaz and Ilona Platzer, 1980 | © Robert Höckmayr
In 2014, after some new eye-witness accounts came to light, the federal public prosecutor reopened the investigation. Five years later it was concluded that the attacker had been motivated by far-right extremist sentiments. His aim had been to influence the 1980 federal parliamentary elections in favour of Franz Josef Strauß, the leading candidate for the conservative Bavarian party, the Christian Social Union, and later to establish a “Führer state”.
Franz Josef Strauß (CSU), Bavarian prime minister at the time and the party’s candidate for federal chancellor, visited the injured boy in hospital. Robert Höckmayr remembers his words: “I’ve seen worse in the war.”
__ The exhibition „Dokumentation Oktoberfest-Attentat“ was opened to mark the 40th anniversary of the attacks. Located at the entrance to the Theresienwiese (where the Oktoberfest is held each year) , it informs visitors about the events that took place on Sept. 26, 1980. | © Landeshauptstadt München / Kulturreferat
The attacker, who died during the bomb explosion, was a member of the far-right extremist “Wiking-Jugend” (Viking Youth) and also had contacts to the “Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann”, a paramilitary neo-Nazi group that trained its members in the martial arts and use of weapons.The “Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann” is considered to have been the nucleus of far-right terrorism in 1970s Germany and a group through which many subsequent terrorists passed. Its members were open Holocaust deniers and sought to establish an authoritarian state. The group was banned in 1980.
It was not until 2020 that the Oktoberfest attack was categorized as a terrorist act of the Far Right. However, many questions concerning possible accomplices and undercover informants remain unanswered to this day.
Massacre in Norway
On 22 July 2011, a Norwegian far-right terrorist set off a car bomb in front of the seat of the social democratic government in the Norwegian capital, Oslo. Eight people were killed by this attack. He then drove to the nearby island of Utøya and attacked heavily armed a holiday camp run by the youth organization of the social democratic party, the “Arbeiderpartiet”. There the attacker killed 69 people. Most of them were teenagers.
In a criminal trial, the attacker was sentenced to 21 years imprisonment with subsequent preventive detention.
___ Aerial view of the island of Utøya, Juli 21, 2011 | © picture alliance
The perpetrator of the terrorist attacks in Oslo and on the island of Utøya stated as his motive a wish to defend Norway against Islam and against alleged “cultural Marxism.”
Shortly before the attacks he sent a more than 1,500-page “Manifesto” to 1,003 e-mail recipients and posted a twelve-minute video online. In it he proclaimed a Christian-fundamentalist, antipluralist “conservative revolution” that opposed immigration and a multi-cultural society.
___ Photo: Government headquarters in Oslo after the bombing, July 22, 2011 | © picture alliance / Kamerapress.se | R4454 Video: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, A survivor remembers, July 21, 2021
When he appeared in court in 2012, the Oslo and Utøya attacker referred, among other things to the German terrorist group Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund (National-Socialist Underground, NSU), which had blown its cover in 2011. The attacks at the Olympia shopping center in Munich (2016), on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand (2019), and on the synagogue in Halle (2019) were inspired by the terrorist attacks in Oslo and on Utøya.
Murder of Walter Lübcke
Kassel District President Walter Lübcke was murdered on the terrace of his home on the night of 1st to 2nd June 2019. The attacker, who was known as a far-right extremist, said his main motive for killing Lübcke had been the latter’s work for refugees. On 28 January 2021, the Frankfurt am Main Higher Regional Court sentenced the assassin to life imprisonment.
The murder triggered a sustained broad public debate in Germany. The debate focused on the failures of the security authorities, the role of right-wing populist and in some cases far-right extremist parties like the Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD) in generating a radical political climate, and the failure to effectively punish hate crime in social media networks.
___ Demonstration at the verdict announcement in the Lübcke trial in Frankfurt, 2021 | © Hannes P. Albert/SZ Photo
Since 2015, Kassel District President Walter Lübcke had already been massively threatened in far-right extremist online forums and at rallies for his involvement in helping refugees and asylum seekers. He was not the only one, either: local politicians and other holders of official offices have repeatedly been verbally and physically attacked and put under pressure.
The murderer of Walter Lübcke had contacts with the right-wing extremist milieu in the federal states of Hesse and Thuringia as well as with people in NSU circles. He had also attended events staged by the Hessian branch of the AfD. Although there were some indications that he had had accomplices and supporters, he was sentenced as a lone perpetrator.
Personnel and ideological continuities
Far-right terrorism is not just a phenomenon of the present. It goes back to the very beginnings of the Federal Republic of Germany. Far-right terrorism against the Allied military administration in Germany began only shortly after World War II had ended. Far-right terrorists sought to prevent Germany embarking on a path towards a democratic future and chose well-known and highly symbolic targets for their acts of terror. But they also carried out attacks on representatives of the four Allied nations and of a democratic Germany, on the de-Nazification courts known as Spruchkammern and even on border installations between East and West Germany.
Starting in the late 1960s, parallel to far-left terrorism, the far-right terrorist scene renewed itself. Far-right terrorist groups turned against both communism and Americanism and resisted the new Ostpolitik of the Social Democrat-Liberal coalition government under Willy Brandt. Right-wing extremist front organizations such as the Bund Heimattreuer Jugend (League of Homeland-Loyal German Youth) and the Wiking-Jugend (Viking Youth) as well as the NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany) later spawned far-right terrorists. All of them view violence as a legitimate political instrument.
In the years following reunification there was a widespread far-right youth culture in Germany Especially in former East Germany, neo-Nazi groups willing to use violence formed. Today, one of the groups spawning far-right terrorists is the so-called Reichsbürgerbewegung (Reich Citizens’ Movement). These terrorists’ aim is to abolish the free democratic basic order by violent means.
Planned attack on the International Military Tribunal
After the end of World War II, the Allies feared attacks on the courthouse in Nuremberg where the Major War Criminals Trial against leading representatives of the Nazi regime took place in 1945/46.
On 5 July 1946, the Berlin newspaper Der Sozialdemokrat reported on a planned attack on the Major War Criminals Trial in Nuremberg by former members of the SS which was thwart by the military police.
To protect the International Military Tribunal, bulletproof glass was installed in the windows. A US M24 Cha¢ee tank was deployed to protect the East Wing..
___ Tank with soldiers in front of the East Wing of the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, 1946 | © National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland, RG 238 NT 181, Foto: U.S. Army Signal Corps
Attacks by the Hepp-Kexel group
In the early postwar years groups and individuals seeking to prevent denazification, the democratization of Germany, and its forging ties with the West carried out terror attacks in a number of West German cities.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the main target of militant far-right groups was US soldiers stationed in Germany and their facilities. One of the most dangerous terrorist groups was the Hepp-Kexel-Gruppe. The group had a fundamentally anti-American stance sought revenge against the victors of World War II. After the group was broken up, one of its founders went underground in the Middle East with the help of the GDR Ministry for State Security (MfS). On behalf of the MfS he offered his services to the Palestine Liberation Organization, before he was arrested in Paris in 1985 and two years later extradited to West Germany.
___ Bomb attack by the Hepp-Kexel Group on the vehicle of a US soldier in Butzbach, 14 December 1982 | © picture-alliance / ap | schiller
Terror against diversity
People whom far-right terrorists perceive as outsiders are repeatedly subjected to extreme violence. Their actions are motivated by a racist-nationalist view of the world according to which they have to “protect” their own people by maintaining its “purity” and eliminating any “foreign” influences. Often this ideology coincides with a fear of being “overrun by foreigners” and with an aggressive rejection of a culturally diverse society.
Far-right terrorists believe they are entitled to combat the alleged degradation of a people by brutal means and in so doing seek to win over others to their cause. Those who are perceived as outsiders are excluded, persecuted or even killed because of their skin colour, supposed origin or religion but also because of their social position and behavior, their gender identity and sexuality or their physical or mental condition. For those his ideology presents a major danger and they feel constantly threatened in all spheres of life: in their private life, at work and in public and virtual space.
Since 2015 there have been an increasing number of attacks on refugee accommodation and on migrants. This wave of violence is reminiscent of the 1990s, when racist attacks were an everyday occurrence.
Arson attack on the “Liverpool” night club
The Munich citizen Corinna Tartarotti was 20 years old when she died of her serious injuries on April 27, 1984, after fighting for her life for several months. She was the victim of an arson attack by the far-right terrorist group Gruppe Ludwig on the Liverpool night club on Schillerstraße 11a. At least seven other people were injured, some of them seriously. Between 1977 and 1984 the terrorist group murdered at least 15 people, most of them in northern Italy:
Guerrino Spinelli, August 25, 1977, Verona Luciano Stefanato, Dec.19, 1978, Padua Claudio Costa, Dec.12, 1979, Venice Alice Maria Beretta, Dec. 20, 1980, Vicenza Luca Martinotti, May 24,1981, Verona Mario Lovato and Giovanni Pigato, July 20, 1982, Vicenza Armando Bison, Feb. 20,1983, Trento Giorgio Fronza, Ernesto Mauri, Pasquale Esposito, Elio Molteni, Domenico La Sala, and Livio Ceresoli, May 14, 1983, Milan Corinna Tartarotti, Jan.7, 1984, Munich
___ Corinna Tartarotti, detail of a class photo from the yearbook of the Städtisches St.-Anna-Gymnasium | © Städtisches St.-Anna-Gymnasium
Initially, the Munich investigation team and the gutter press thought that someone from the red light milieu, of which they believed the Liverpool was part, had been responsible for the attack.
After the two main perpetrators were arrested in Italy in 1984 and a letter claiming responsibility emerged, it became clear that the attacks in both Germany and Italy had been committed by neo-Nazis who were motivated by their hatred of liberal morals and homosexuality and of marginal social groups. Their cause was to fight what they perceived as a “moral decline,” and their acts of violence therefore targeted sex workers, homosexuals, drug addicts, and the homeless. The police, the courts, and the media, however, painted a picture of twisted, mentally ill perpetrators who had acted in isolation without any supporters.
___ The Liverpool night club following the arson attack, 1984 | © amw/SZ Photo
The way the police handled the Gruppe Ludwig murders has parallels with how they responded to the later series of murders committed by the National Socialist Underground (NSU). In both cases, a right-wing extremist background was initially largely ruled out and the ideological links with fascism and Nazism were not followed up. Instead, the police looked for the perpetrators in the victims’ environment. Those who had lost family members or friends to far-right terrorism were for many years falsely accused, stigmatized, and criminalized.
When you realise that you’ll be attacked in that way because of your origin, then your first thought is: Why should I stay here? I’ve tried so hard, I’m a model of integration. But [making me leave] was what these people wanted. So afterwards I thought: No, now I’m denitely going to stay! I’m certainly not going to let myself be chased out of Germany.
Words from the Witness M.M. during the NSU trial, 4. June 2014
___ Memorial event for Habil Kılıç murdered by the NSU on August 29, 2001, in Munich, 2013 | © Alessandra Schellnegger / Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo
The NSU murders
Between 2000 and 2007, the National Socialist Underground Terrorist Group killed at least ten people in several different German cities:
Enver Şimşek , 9 Sept 2000, Nuremberg Abdurrahim Özüdoğru, 16 June 2001, Nuremberg Süleyman Taşköprü, 27 June 2001, Hamburg Habil Kılıç, 29 Aug 2001, Munich Mehmet Turgut, 25 Feb 2004, Rostock İsmail Yaşar, 9 June 2005, Nuremberg Theodoros Boulgarides, 15 June 2005, Munich Mehmet Kubaşık, 4 April 2006, Dortmund Halit Yozgat, 6 April 2006, Kassel Michèle Kiesewetter, 25 April 2007, Heilbronn
They selected their victims on account of their racial origins and killed them at their places of work. Initially, the investigation ruled out a far-right terrorist motive and sought purported links between the victims and organised crime or other offences.
___ Portraits of the victims of the NSU, illustrated by Hendrik Jonas | © Hendrik Jonas
For a thorough investigation to take place, the carpets under which so much had been swept would have to have been lifted.
Yvonne Boulgarides widow of Theodoros Boulgarides in her appeal on February 8, 2018, during the NSU trial in Munich
In November 2011, the terrorist group exposed itself and two of the main perpetrators shot themselves. Her accomplice gave herself up to the police shortly thereafter. A video claiming responsibility showed details of the attacks and proved that the group had also been responsible for several armed robberies and bomb attacks in which further people had been injured, some of them seriously.
The trial before the Munich Higher Regional Court lasted five years. After 438 days of hearings, the main perpetrator was sentenced to life imprisonment with a verdict of especially severe guilt. Her four co-defendants received sentences of between two and a half and ten years.
__ Demonstration on the day the verdict was pronounced in the NSU trial in Munich, 2018 | © Robert Haas/SZ-Photo
Many questions of those who escaped with their lives and of surviving dependents remain unanswered to this day. The existing networks between the NSU and right-wing extremist circles have scarcely been uncovered, and other persons involved in the murder and their local accomplices have not been identified. The sloppy police investigation and mistakes made by state authorities in their evaluation of the murders remained without consequences.
Attack on the Olympia shopping center
On July 22, 2016, an 18-year-old far-right extremist shot nine people dead in and around the Olympia shopping center and in a fast-food restaurant. The victims were aged between 14 and 45:
Armela Segashi, Can Leyla, Dijamant Zabërgja Guiliano Kollmann, Hüseyin Dayıcık, Roberto Rafael, Sabine Sulaj, Selçuk Kılıç, Sevda Dağ
The perpetrator killed himself soon after the attack.
__ Portraits of the victims of the OEZ-Attack on July 22, 2016 | © Initiative München OEZ erinnern!
Were we to teach people in these world empathy instead of classification, judgment, and compartmentalization, perhaps we wouldn’t have to go through everything that has now become a reality.
Sibel Leyla
mother of the murdered Can Leyla, July 22, 2022
___ Can Leyla wrote this letter to his family while at primary school. Later he attended the sports class at a school in the Munich suburb of Unterhaching and wanted to become a professional footballer. Can Leyla was killed in the racist attack in Munich on 22 July 2016. He was 14 years old. | © The Leyla family, Munich, Memorium Nürnberger Prozesse, photo: matthaeus photographer
Police investigators initially classified the attack as a shooting spree without a political motive. The Munich gunman had published a text prior to the attack professing racist sentiments. He deliberately targeted people whom he assumed to have a migrant background.
Only in 2019, as a result of persistent pressure from the bereaved and their supporters, was the crime reassessed. The verdict was that it had been motivated by racism and right-wing extremism. The initiative München OEZ erinnern! campaigns to this day to keep alive the memory of the terrorist attack at the Olympia shopping center and its victims. It is fighting to ensure that the names of the nine people who were murdered are not forgotten and that their fate is inscribed in the city’s memory.
___ Graffiti Remember OEZ Munich! under the Brudermühl bridge, Munich, 2024 | © NS-Dokumentationszentrum München, photo: Connolly Weber Photography
___ On the sixth anniversary of the far-right attack on the Olympia shopping center in Munich, people gathered to remember Armela, Can, Dijamant, Guiliano, Hüseyin, Roberto, Sabine, Selçuk, and Sevda. | © Initiative München OEZ erinnern!
The attacker was in close contact via online platforms with other right-wing extremists, including some in the United States. The Munich murders were committed on the fifth anniversary of the attacks in Oslo and on Utøya. The murder weapon, which the perpetrator had obtained through the darknet, was similar to that used by his Norwegian counterpart. And like his Norwegian model, he left behind a manifesto full of hatred toward migrants and clichés of right-wing extremist ideology.
These tears are not for you.
Sara Quasem
daughter of the murdered Abdelfattah Quasem, during the trial of the Christchurch attacker on August 16, 2020.
___ Demonstration in Munich in response to the far-right terrorist attack in Hanau, Feb.19, 2020 | © leo.fge/SZ-Photo
Attack on two mosques
On March 15, 2019, the Islamophobic, heavily armed right-wing extremist perpetrator attacked the Masjid-Al-Noor mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, where the Muslim community had assembled for Friday prayers. He murdered 51 people and injured another 50, some of them seriously. The youngest victim was three, the oldest, 71:
Mucaad Ibrahim, Naeem Rashid, Talha Naeem, Haji Daoud Nabi, Muhammad Abdus Samad, Husna Ahmed, Khalid Mustafa, Hamza Mustafa, Junaid Ismail, Mohsen Al Harbi, Areeb Ahmed, Lilik Abdul Hamid, Muhammad Ata Elayyan, Jahandad Ali, Haroon Mahmood, Amjad Hamid, Osama Adnan Abukwaik, Muhammad Suhail Shahid, Abdelfattah Qassem, Ali Mah’d Abdullah Elmadani, Kamel Mohd Kamal Kamel Darwish, Maheboob Khokhar, Arif Mohamedali Vohra, Ramiz Arif Bhai Vora, Ansi Alibava, Ozair Kadir, Mounir Guirgis Soliman, Ahmed Gamal Eldin Mohamed Abdel Ghany, Ashraf el-Moursy Ragheb, Ashraf al-Masri, Matiullah Safi, Muhammad Zeshan Raza, Ghulam Hussain, Karam Bibi, Muse Awale, Abdukadir Elmi, Hussein al-Umari, Mohammed Imran Khan
___ When he appeared in court, victims and relatives had an opportunity to speak to him directly and to express their feelings, 26 Aug. 2020 | © picture alliance / REUTERS | POOL New
The Christchurch killer live-streamed his attack on the internet with a helmet camera in order to reach as many people as possible. The New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern undermined this strategy by declaring: “You will never hear me mention his name.” During the court proceedings he was likewise given no opportunity to propagate his ideology.
In the political, legal and social aftermath of the Christchurch shootings, the focus was on victims and their relatives.
On August 27, 2020, the attacker was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of early release for murder. This was the first time that the highest penalty available in New Zealand was imposed.
___ Video: BBC News, 'I am close to forgiving the Christchurch gunman', 23.08.2020
The Christchurch attacker maintained contacts with European far-right groups, such as the Identitäre Bewegung (IB) in Austria, to which he donated a large sum of money. Prior to the attack he had published a manifesto entitled “Der Große Austausch” (The Great Replacement). This anti-Muslim propaganda slogan was coined by the IB and posits an alleged plan to replace the white Western population with Muslim migrants and to Islamize the West and issues calls to resist this. Before the attack, the perpetrator had posted a photo of the Masjid-al-Noor mosque amid a collage of violent memes and images of the mass murders of Norway and Oklahoma City.
The livestream broadcast of the attack on the internet was subsequently copied by other perpetrators.
Attack in Hanau
On the evening of February 19, 2020, nine people were killed in a far-right terrorist attack in Hanau. At least five more were injured, some of them seriously. The attacker shot people at various locations around the city, choosing his targets according to racist criteria: Gökhan Gültekin, Sedat Gürbüz, Said Nesar, Hashemi, Mercedes Kierpacz, Hamza Kurtović, Vili Viorel Păun, Fatih Saraçoğlu, Ferhat Unvar, Kaloyan Velkov He then went to his parents’ home, where he killed his mother and committed suicide.
___ Underneath the Friedensbrücke in Frankfurt, a 27-meter-long memorial graffiti commemorates the victims of the attack in Hanau on February 19, 2020 | © picture-alliance
The investigations of the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Prosecutor revealed that the terrorist had acted out of far-right extremist and racist motives. They found no evidence of any accomplices or accessories. In July 2021 the State of Hesse tasked a parliamentary investigation committee with investigating the behaviour of the security organs on the night of the crime. The final report in December 2023 acknowledges and expresses regret about the mistakes made by the security authorities but denies that the murders could have been prevented.
___ Photo: “Remembrance means fighting” – commemoration in Munich of the Hanau attack, 2024 | © leo.fge/SZ-Photo Video: ZDF heute Nachrichten, Four years after Hanau – the victims’ relatives campaign to keep their memory alive, Feb.19, 2024 | © ZDF
It was not least the attack in Hanau that led the German federal government in November 2020 to adopt an extensive package of measures to combat far-right extremism and racism.
Since 2020 the civil society Initiative 19. Februar Hanau has been campaigning to ensure that the names and faces of the victims are not forgotten and that the distress felt in the face of the attack should not remain without consequences. The initiative has called for political solidarity, resolution, and visibility.
__ Poster motive from: Initiative 19. Februar Hanau | © Initiative 19. Februar Hanau
On the night of the attack, the police and special forces (SEK) operation was unstructured and chaotic. For some of that time the emergency number 110 was unreachable. The emergency exit of the Arena Bar, one of the scenes of the crime, had been permanently locked, probably with the knowledge of the police, so that it was impossible to escape via the back door. Five hours passed before the police stormed the house where the attacker lived, which would potentially have allowed him to escape.
Hatred towards Jews
Anti-Semitism and hatred of Judaism are central elements of far-right terrorists’ world view. Through their activities and propaganda, they aim to vilify, ostracise or extinguish Jewish life. They are driven by antisemitic conspiracy theories claiming that Jews secretly rule and control the world. Judaism is thus held responsible for all the world’s problems.
Far-right terrorist activity is directed against a critical examination of the Shoah and against the commemoration of its victims. By denying or playing down the mass murder of European Jews, they seek to obviate questions of guilt and responsibility. Hatred towards Jews, Jewish institutions and the State of Israel has increasingly been disseminated and radicalized via online platforms in recent decades.
Attack on the Tree-of-Life Synagogue
On the morning of 27 October 2018, a 43-year-old shot 11 people and seriously injured a further six at the Tree-of- Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA):
Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax, Irving Younger
It was the most serious act of antisemitic violence in the history of the United States. The 11 who died were attending the Shabbat service at the synagogue. Among the injured were four policemen who tried to stop the attacker. The gunman surrendered after an exchange of fire. Criminal proceedings against him are still being prepared. In August 2023, he was sentenced to death.
___ Memorials in front of the Tree-of-Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh, Oct. 30, 2018 | Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain
The Pittsburgh attacker had apparently become radicalized through online social media networks, where he disseminated racist and neo-Nazi material and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Right-wing extremist actors, organizations, and parties systematically use platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, to spread their brutal ideology among young people and to spread disinformation and fake news.
Where am I supposed to go? I have no-one. The home that’s burning there was my world.
a survivor on February 13, 1970
___ The burning Jewish residential home in Reichenbachstraße, Munich, 1970 | © picture-alliance/dpa/Gerhard Rauchwetter
Attack on the Jewish community’s residential home
On the evening of February 13, 1970, an unknown person started a fire on the staircase of the community home of the Jewish religious community of Munich and Upper Bavaria on Reichenbachstraße.
Regina Rivka Becher, Max Meir Blum, Leopold Arie Leib Gimpel, David Jakubowicz, Siegfried Offenbacher, Georg Eljakim Pfau, Rosa Drucker—many of them Holocaust survivors—died in the flames or trying to jump to safety.
__ A burnt-out room in the Jewish community’s residential home, 1970 | © picture alliance / dpa | Joachim Barfknecht
The perpetrator, who has not been identified to this day, set fire to the wooden staircase leading up to the upper floors, which was used as a residence for the elderly. The fire spread rapidly through the entire building, making it impossible to escape via the staircase. At that time the community’s synagogue was located in the back courtyard of the property.
The attack aroused great dismay, grief, and indignation all over West Germany and had grave consequences for Jewish communities: tighter security, permanent surveillance, and living in fear.
The crime has not been solved to this day, and it is unclear whether the perpetrator(s) were male or female and whether they came from the right- or left-extremist end of the spectrum. This shows how widespread an antisemitic mentality and antisemitic hate crime, including violence, still was in post-1945 society
Attack on the Synagogue
On Yom Kippur, the most important Jewish holiday, armed with home-made weapons and explosives a farright terrorist tried to force his way into the synagogue in Halle an der Saale with the intention of murdering the people gathered there.
Finding himself unable to enter the synagogue, the attacker instead killed the 40-year-old passer-by Jana L. and 20-yearold Kevin S., a guest at a nearby take-away. He acted out of antisemitic, racist and misogynist motives.
___ Jana L. loved popular hits and knew many of Germany’s most prominent hit singers personally. Kevin S. was a fan of the football club Hallescher FC. Their two very different fan clubs jointly remembered Jana and Kevin with this card, Halle (Saale), 2019 | © Jüdische Gemeinde zu Halle
In a text the terrorist published before committing the crimes he outlined the conspiracy theories he espoused and declared himself a fighter in a “racial war”.
The trial was the biggest criminal trial ever to have taken place in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. It lasted 25 days during which 79 witnesses and 15 experts were questioned; the co-plaintiffs were 45 survivors and relatives of the victims represented by 23 lawyers. On 21 December 2020, the Naumburg Higher Regional Court found him guilty of two instances of murder, 68 instances of attempted murder, and sedition. It sentenced him to life imprisonment followed by preventive detention.
___ Holes shot in the door of the Halle synagogue. Since 2020, the door has been part of a memorial in the inner courtyard of the synagogue. | © picture-alliance
The Halle attacker sought to copy the attack on two mosques in Christchurch that had taken place a few months earlier. He, too, live-streamed his deed, staging it like a computer game. Since the 2000s, a far-right subculture has emerged on the internet with its own codes, images, memes, and language. Right-wing extremists network, radicalize, and organize themselves in imageboards such as 8chan or 4chan.
The struggle for recognition
For decades, politicians, authorities, and the media responded to organized far-right terrorism with helplessness, caution or even deliberate attempts to ignore the subject.
For a long time the focus was mainly on the perpetrators, who not seldom were classified as “lone wolves”—with far-reaching consequences for those affected by far-right terrorist violence. Only after the National Socialist Underground was uncovered and after the most recent attacks in Munich, Halle, and Hanau has this perception gradually begun to change.
The fact that the perspective of those targeted by far-right terrorists is now being listened to is the achievement of the survivors and relatives of the victims of far-right violence.
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EU dispute resolution
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Dispute resolution proceedings in front of a consumer arbitration board
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