Hanau members
"A whole year has passed and we actually had no time to mourn"
© Pradeep Thomas Thundiyil / Shutterstock
A year ago, nine people were killed in a racist terrorist attack in Hanau. Now a family member speaks about a year full of uncertainty – in which there was hardly any room for grief.
Kaloyan Velkow, Gökhan Gültekin, Sedat Gürbüz, Said Nesar Hashemi, Mercedes Kierpacz, Hamza Kurtović, Vili Viorel Păun, Fatih Saraçoğlu, Ferhat Unvar. Nine names behind which there are nine lives that ended abruptly a year ago. On February 19, 2020, a racist shot and killed nine people with foreign roots in Hanau.
After thousands of people had already gathered in Frankfurt yesterday for a demonstration against racism in Frankfurt, the official memorial ceremony for the victims will take place in Hanau this evening. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will give a speech there. Several relatives should also have their say.
Hanau: a year full of question marks
The "Tagesschau" spoke to an affected person in advance. In an interview, the bereaved Ajla Kurtović reports on a difficult year. She lost her brother Hamza in the right-wing attack. The conversation, however, is not just about the grief that the family had to go through in the past few months – but rather about a lack of understanding.
"A whole year has passed and we didn't really have time to mourn because we are busy every day trying to find answers to our questions", says Ajla Kurtović. Because even if a year has already passed, elementary questions remain open to this day – for example, what actually happened on the night of the crime. How the perpetrator drove from place to place, when the police and rescue workers arrived, and last but not least, whether the victims might even have been saved.
The family of the killed Hamza Kurtović was misinformed
In the conversation, the relatives reported that she and her family have not yet had a meeting with the Hessian police. Instead, it would be sent from authority to authority, the process is diffuse.
Hamza Kurtović's family has had this feeling of uncertainty since the night of the crime on February 19. Even then there was great confusion. After the family was told that Hamza had been hospitalized with minor injuries, they did not know which one and were taken to a police hall. Until his name was suddenly read out on a list of the dead.
For a week, the family is said not to have known where Hamza was. "I only saw my brother in the morgue at the cemetery, completely covered, only his face was visible. Otherwise the sight would have been unbearable ", tells his sister the "Tagesschau" opposite. She was also not informed in advance: "We would have liked to have seen him before the autopsy and said goodbye with dignity," she says, looking back.
How could a right-wing terrorist attack like this happen in Germany? The interview makes it clear how many questions about the racist murders in Hanau are still open even a year later. But it also shows the importance of knowing the names of the victims. Because they should sensitize us every day anew that racism exists in our society – and each of us should do our best to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.
Sources used: Tagesschau, Deutschlandfunkt