Timelines

Explore histories of migration, citizenship and belonging in Germany and the U.S. over the centuries.

1980

1989

Right-wing extremism and racist violence in the FRG and GDR

Since its foundation, the FRG has experienced a series of right-wing terrorist attacks, with 1980 being particularly serious. In August of that year, the so-called German Action Groups murdered Nguyễn Ngọc Châu and Đỗ Anh Lân, who lived in a refugee accommodation, in an arson attack in Hamburg. Also in 1980, a former member of the Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann carried out the Oktoberfest attack in Munich, in which 13 people died. Only three months later, Rabbi Shlomo Lewin and his partner Frida Poeschke were shot dead in Erlangen, most likely by the Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann.

Despite the state-imposed anti-fascism in the GDR, there were also acts of racist violence here. In 1964 there were violent clashes between Germans and Poles in several places, in which 5 Poles were injured. In 1975 a pogrom took place in Erfurt when Germans armed with wooden slats and crowbars attacked Algerian contract workers. The riots lasted a total of three days. In 1979 Raúl Garcia Paret and Delfin Guerra from Cuba were murdered in Merseburg and in 1986 Manuel Diogo from Mozambique was murdered by neo-Nazis on a train between Berlin and Dessau.

©Initiative 12 August, 2020

Public commemoration for Delfin Guerra and Raúl Garcia Paret, murdered in Merseburg in 1979.

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