In memory of Enver Şimşek

Speech by Lord Mayor Dr. Thomas Nitzsche on the 25th anniversary of the death of Enver Şimşek

Ladies and Gentlemen,

25 years and two days ago, on September 9, 2000, eight shots were fired at Enver Şimşek at midday. On that day, he was filling in for an employee on vacation at a stall in his flower wholesale business on a street in Nuremberg. Two days later, 25 years ago today, he succumbed to his serious injuries.

Enver Şimşek was the first of a total of ten murder victims. The local memorial plaque and the naming of the square stand for all ten murdered people, nine with a migrant background and the policewoman Michele Kiesewetter.

When we come together here, we remember all the victims of the NSU:

• In 2001, Abdurrahim Özüdoğru, Süleyman Taşköprü and Habil Kılıҫ had to die,
• In 2004, Mehmet Turgut was killed by three shots fired by the NSU murderers,
• İsmail Yaşar and Theodoros Boulgarides, murdered in 2005
• Mehmet Kubaşık and Halit Yozgat, murdered in 2006.
• One year later, on April 25, 2007, policewoman Michèle Kiesewetter was shot dead.

None of them were guilty of anything. They, the migrant victims, had immigrated to Germany years ago, had migrated here to build a better life for themselves. Most of them were self-employed, with all the special challenges that entails. Many had started families and had children. Mothers and fathers lost their sons, wives their husbands, children their fathers.

Five years ago, we inaugurated this memorial plaque here and named this square after Enver Şimşek together with his widow and children to honor him as a representative of all the victims and to keep the memory of these crimes alive.

We have also invited the family to today's commemoration. They are currently in Nuremberg, where the Şimşek family lived 25 years ago and where Enver Şimşek was murdered.

The children have asked for our understanding that they cannot be here today because the death of their father still weighs heavily on them and they are heavily involved in commemorative events in Nuremberg.

I am therefore all the more pleased that daughter Semiya Şimşek has sent us an audio message, which we will hear immediately afterwards.

After Semiya's words, Michael Ebenau will speak to us, who has been intensively involved with the NSU and the conditions in Jena in the 1980s and 1990s since the National Socialist Underground exposed itself, with the environment from which the NSU perpetrators ultimately emerged.

The suffering inflicted on the families cannot really be comprehended. As if it wasn't terrible enough to lose a close relative, the bereaved had to fend off suspicions that the murders were due to involvement in organized crime, the red-light district or drug dealing.

These allegations very often came from the state, while indications that the crimes could have a xenophobic, right-wing extremist background were not pursued seriously or at all.

This makes it all the more important that we as a society come to terms with this failure, evaluate it self-critically - and ask for forgiveness.

Coming to terms with the past is important in order to gain and maintain a clear view of developments and conditions in our country, even in these difficult times. In order to learn from the past and prevent a repetition of the terrible events, we in Jena must also continue to deal with the question of how the National Socialist Underground was able to emerge here.

The NSU memorial year 2021 was an important start. In Jena, we must continue to work on researching and communicating the history of the NSU and commemorating the victims.

With this goal in mind, the Rosenthal Scholarship for Fine Arts has been rededicated as a scholarship for political education and will be used from this fall to academically reappraise the time and environment in which the NSU was able to develop in Jena.

From November, Leonie Dellen will spend a year researching youth social work in the period from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s. The results of this work will be translated into an educational concept that can be used in Jena's schools.

At this point, the exhibition "Der Weg in den 'Untergrund'", which can be seen at Villa Rosenthal until mid-October, should also be mentioned.

The journalist Frank Döbert, who died last year, has used newspaper reports, documents and photographs to compile traces that make the radicalization of the perpetrator trio and the reactions of the city society and authorities comprehensible.

Since the spring, a group of numerous members of civil society and the administration has been working under the leadership of Johannes Schleußner, Head of Cultural Affairs, on the question of how we want to further develop the commemoration of the victims of the NSU in Jena.

We must continue to tell the story of Enver Şimşek and the other victims of the NSU and show both young and older people where extreme and inhuman ideologies lead.

This also means that we as a city must send a visible signal that we will not tolerate a climate of fear, intimidation and violence in our city. We must all take a stand against these and all other right-wing extremist and misanthropic acts.

In view of the pressure on our society, it is crucial that the democratic constitution of our country, human and civil rights and the dignity of every individual are preserved.

We want people of migrant origin to feel safe in Jena, to feel comfortable and to find a home, even if it is only a temporary home.

I am glad that the struggle for our human coexistence is supported by the breadth of Jena's urban society. The commitment of civil society is essential here, as it plays a decisive role in advancing the process of our internal debate within the city. With this in mind, we will continue to work together constructively.

With this in mind, I am grateful that you have come here this year to commemorate the victims of the National Socialist Underground.