User:Macador/Pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen
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Lichtenhagen, a suburb of the german town of Rostock, gained notoriety in August 1992, when local residents and neonazis from over the country committed the worst pogrom in post-war Germany which lasted for several days and nights.
Lichtenhagen lies in Rostock's northwest. It was one of the city's first Plattenbau areas, meant to provide affordable housing space. The closeness of the Warnemünde seaside resort makes it a popular place to live in.
In 1992, the ZASt (Zentrale Aufnahmestelle für Asylbewerber, a home for asylum-seekers) was located in an eleven-storey building in Lichtenhagen, called the "sunflower house" because of the painting of sunflowers on its front. The home was known for the degrading conditions its inhabitants had to dwell in. They were barely cared for at all, and the local authorities ignored numerous complaints from inhabitants and neighbours of the ZASt regarding the hygienic and general conditions.
[edit] The attacks
Xenophobic attacks on individuals from the sunflower house had happened before, but on August 22 1992 a crowd of young people appeared and began throwing stones at inhabitants of the house, who fled inside. The crowd began to smash in the windows. Police intervened only hesitantly and withdrew when the attackers resisted them.
In the following nights more and more people arrived to either participate in the attacks on the sunflower house or in the fights with the police, but most just stood by and watched. Many even applauded or chanted xenophobic slogans.
At the dawn of the third day (August 24th), the ZASt building was evacuated. However, a house nearby in which 115 vietnamese people lived was not evacuated, because the authorities believed it was inhabited only by germans. The attacks now turned towards this house. Young antifa activists who tried to protect the house and its inhabitants and who struggled against the attackers were arrested in the evening, leaving the vietnamese families to the mob.
That night, a crowd of mostly young germans threw stones and molotov cocktails at the building while the onlookers chanted "Foreigners out!". Nazi skinheads broke into the entrance, destroyed the inside with baseball bats and yelled "We will get each one of you, now you will be roasted" while they spilt petrol and set it on fire.
Among the more than one hundred people trapped inside the house was a tv team of the german station ZDF. Eyewitness Thomas Euting, director of the saxony regional studio, reports: "The emergency exits, leading into the adjoining buildings, had been locked and secured with chains by german neighbours to prevent the bothersome foreigners from entering." Euting considered the situation so dangerous that he wrote a farewell letter to his wife.
Luckily, the vietnamese and the tv crew managed to get on the building's rooftop, while the house was burning in the lower storeys. The fire brigade could not get throught the violent crowd, and police refused to blaze them a trail, saying they did not have enough men. The pogrom lasted until the next night, when the situation could finally be put back under control with the help of police units from outside.
