ASPECTS
law, memorial, violence
TEAM
Hannah Englisch, Nils Krüger, Maja Redlin
PARTNERS
YEAR
2021
ABTRACT
On October 9, 2019, an anti-Semitic, racist and anti-feminist assailant in Halle an der Saale attacked the city’s synagogue on the highest Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur. He tried to gain access to the building, failed and later killed two individuals and tried to specifically murder migrant-read people. The perpetrator has now been legally sentenced to the maximum penalty after 26 days of trial, and yet many relevant questions remain unanswered: Did the court grasp the political scope of the attack and its structural reasons? What role does the single perpetrator theory play in negating structural discrimination? How widespread are the perpetrator’s ideologies? In which social networks was he able to radicalise himself? How must the crime be embedded in an overall social context of a racist, anti-Semitic and sexist normal state in order to make the breeding ground for right-wing extremist acts of violence understandable?
The protocols were written and edited by the activist group DEMOC on their own as in german law court cases are not being protocoled or recorded for the public traditionally. Even though the Halle Trial was recorded for historic relevance it is not open to the public for another 30 years past sentencing.