One year after Hanau: "Migrants have trauma"

The Black Lives Matter movement brought more people to the streets in Germany than the racism next door. "It's easy to show solidarity with people who are so far away," says psychologist Jan Ilhan Kizilhan.

ntv.de: Mr. Kizilhan, on February 19, 2020 a racist assassin shot and killed nine people with migrant roots in Hanau. The murdered were between 20 and 37 years old. Then Tobias R. killed his mother, and finally himself. Why doesn't such an attack trigger a national trauma?

Jan Ilhan Kizilhan is a psychology professor and orientalist at the University of Villingen-Schwenningen and specializes in transcultural psychology and traumatology. Among other things, he heads the special program of the Baden-Württemberg state government for the treatment of Yezidi war victims. He also trains psychotherapists in Northern Iraq. Kizilhan is the author of specialist books, including on the Islamic State, but also publishes literary works.

Jan Ilhan Kizilhan: Ever since the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, there have been people who deny migrants the right to exist and therefore feel legitimized to kill them. In the case of migrants, there is definitely a trauma, not as a clinical finding, but rather as a dwindling trust in local politics and society. After such attacks, there is always an outcry, there are expressions of solidarity, and in Hanau I saw, as an example, in affected families whom I looked after, that they were then all alone with their grief. Because there is no social discourse about these recurring events and about how they can be stopped. On the contrary, the racist discourse has even increased in recent years. The anti-democratic AfD has moved into the Bundestag and also creates motives for perpetrators with its rhetoric – and the majority society suppresses the fact that migrants are exposed to the constant stress of being a target.

Last year we saw that in crisis situations there is definitely a collective move closer. The coronavirus has generated a lot of solidarity. Why does society not react in the same way when it comes to right-wing violence like in Hanau and shortly before the attack on the synagogue in Halle?

Because Covid-19 affects everyone. Our society has not yet reached the point where it does not distinguish between migrants and non-migrants and does not distribute its solidarity according to origin. In Hanau, however, it became clear that this dividing line was dissolved within the migrants. There was no difference whether someone was Arab, Turkish or Kurd, here they had a common migrant identity. This has meant that solidarity was in the foreground and strengthened among the migrants. A model that has not yet been transferred to the majority society. Those affected are also victims of indifference.

You know some of those affected in Hanau. How can the survivors come to terms with this event?

It is very difficult because it is an assassination attempt on understanding the world. Man cannot imagine someone suddenly walking into the shisha bar and shooting at everyone. Those injured there saw death before their eyes. This is followed by depressive symptoms, difficulty falling asleep, nightmares, fears, and unrest. The survivors also feel guilty that their friends died and they didn't. In therapy, those affected can learn to deal with these recurring thoughts and fears. That also depends on the individual strength. But people will never forget this event.

How does such an attack change the bereaved?

They react with frustration and disappointment, with sadness and the fear that something similar might happen to their other children. The real problems start after the expressions of solidarity end and those left behind are alone. It would therefore be important that something be implemented politically for the murdered, for example a symbolic memorial, then the feeling would be conveyed that they did not die in vain and that their death could raise awareness of the issue of racism. There has to be a purpose in death to cope better with it.

The attack in Hanau also included victims from war zones, the Hashemi family. One son of the family was shot and one was seriously injured – her parents had fled to Germany before the war. These are people who want to enable their children to live a peaceful life and then forcibly lose them. How can the incomprehensible be made comprehensible at all?

That is very difficult to understand because these people expect in their imaginations a peaceful, democratic Germany. Then they get into a state of shock and the events and feelings from Afghanistan can be reactivated. Suddenly Kabul is in the middle of Hanau. The question of why follows. This is one of the worst feelings a person can have: not understanding. This can become so chronic that the person affected becomes physically ill.

Serpil Temiz Unvar, the mother of the murdered Ferhat Unvar, said in an interview immediately after the crime, crying, that she knew all of the victims. "None of them were unemployed." Why does a grieving mother emphasize in such a situation that her son was not a social case?

I was also very struck by the fact that, even after the death of her child, she tried to find an argument that her son had fulfilled a function in this country. It is terrible when a mother feels compelled to declare that her child has had value within this society and that she is not an unemployed boy who just hangs around in the shisha bar and lives on welfare. These are all the prejudices that migrants hear all the time, and which many Germans do not even notice. Many migrants are constantly in need of subjective evidence, which they have internalized through the constant repetition of prejudices.

"My grandfather was killed in Auschwitz, but I thought our family is now living in safety in Germany," Filip Goman told Zeit-Magazin, who lost his daughter Mercedes Kierpacz in Hanau. As a psychologist and father, can you even say any words of comfort to this man?

Very difficult, because the genocide of the Jews has accompanied families for generations. Of course, the Hanau attack cannot be compared with the Holocaust, and the fact that the perpetrator was mentally ill doesn't help the father much either. In any case, it wouldn't help me. Here, however, community solidarity can help if you share the pain together. I would be silent with the father and be with him in that silence, in his pain and suffering, in the hope that it would not happen again.

In August, thousands wanted to commemorate the nine victims in Hanau. The city canceled the demo – due to the increasing number of corona cases. At the same time, lateral thinker demos took place nationwide – what kind of signal is that sent to those affected?

There it is again, that loss of trust. Here again, migrants have been given the feeling that anything can be done with them and that not all people in this country are the same. Young migrants in particular, who experience such discrimination, then form their own groups and stay with one another where they feel recognized as human beings.

The Black Lives Matter movement brought more people to the streets in Germany than the racism next door. Why is that?

When problems are far away, they can be nice. We don't like to look at our own difficulties, that's why people like to be controlled externally, suppressing their own problems at home. It's also easy to show solidarity with people who are so far away. People then pretend that Germany doesn't have a similar problem of discrimination, exclusion and everyday racism. If you look around Germany honestly and rationally, then you should actually be able to reflect for yourself how you deal with your immigrant neighbor, why your own child is retrained when half of the children at the previous school are migrants. The hidden stereotypes that everyone carries with them are rather suppressed in order not to look inward and to realize that they have chosen to remain silent in front of their own front door.

After the attack in Hanau there were the usual expressions of political dismay – is that enough?

It is important symbolism when high-ranking politicians on the ground express their solidarity. But it cannot stay with this symbolism. We need a stronger commitment within politics to the fact that Germany is a country of immigration and that every citizen of this state has the same rights to develop freely. After more than 50 years of immigration, migrants in Germany are still economically and socially disadvantaged. But so far there are no long-term visions of how the potential of migrants could be integrated and promoted. The positive perspective and appreciation that people come and develop something together is still missing – and if there are problems, then short concepts are developed. There is a lack of political will to plan a national migration strategy beyond the next election, but also to fight anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism.

Cigdem Akyol spoke to Jan Ilhan Kizilhan

. (tagsToTranslate) Politics (t) Terror in Hanau (t) Antisemitism (t) Racism (t) Migrants (t) Interviews