Reading with Gamze Kubaşik and Christine Werner | Moderation: Ali Şirin
Gamze Kubaşık and Semiya Şimşek lost their fathers as a result of the series of murders committed by the right-wing terrorist NSU. Enver Şimşek was murdered in Nuremberg on September 9, 2000 and Mehmet Kubaşık in Dortmund on April 4, 2006 by the right-wing terrorist NSU. In addition to Enver Şimşek and Mehmet Kubaşık, the NSU murdered Abdurrahim Özüdoğru, Süleyman Taşköprü, Habil Kılıç, Mehmet Turgut, İsmail Yaşar, Theodoros Boulgarides, Halit Yozgat and Michèle Kiesewetter between 2000 and 2007.
Gamze Kubaşık will talk about her family history, her father, the NSU complex and her fight for clarification and remembrance. She will talk about how she experienced the shocking events at the time and how the murders tore her from her previous life. But she will also talk about how she and Semiya Şimşek were able to develop a tremendous strength together that has kept them fighting to this day: against forgetting and for a future without exclusion. The youth book "Our pain is our strength" addresses these issues and the work of remembrance.
Until the so-called self-disclosure of the NSU in November 2011, the relatives of the victims were not taken seriously by law enforcement authorities, administration and politics, but also by parts of the media, left alone and even suspected of being involved in the murders and attacks themselves. The ignorance and false accusations against the victims and their families were often characterized by racist attitudes. Their demands for a complete investigation into the NSU's crimes and the neo-Nazi network behind them were not met in the following years, and the role that domestic intelligence services and law enforcement agencies played in the NSU complex remains unclear to this day.
Gamze Kubaşık and Semiya Şimşek met at the silent march in Kassel in May 2006, which the Yozgat family, whose son Halit was murdered in his internet café on 6 April 2006, had organized under the slogan "No tenth victim!". Since then, they have been fighting together for clarification, remembrance and consequences.
Admission free/donations welcome
Venue: Literaturhaus Rostock in the Peter-Weiss-Haus, Doberaner Str. 21, 18057 Rostock
The reading is organized by the documentation center "Lichtenhagen in Memory" in cooperation with the Literaturhaus Rostock. The occasion is the 22nd anniversary of the death of Mehmet Turgut, who was murdered in Rostock-Toitenwinkel for racist reasons by the so-called NSU.
