Between 2000 and 2007, the “National Socialist Underground” (abbreviated “NSU,” the self-designation of the right-wing terrorist network) murdered ten people in Germany: Enver Şimşek, Abdurrahim Özüdoğru, Süleyman Taşköprü, Habil Kılıç, Mehmet Turgut, İsmail Yaşar, Theodoros Boulgarides, Mehmet Kubaşık, Halit Yozgat, and Michèle Kiesewetter (from left to right).
In three bombings carried out by the NSU in Nuremberg and Cologne, many people were seriously injured and traumatized. Those murdered and the victims of the attacks were in the prime of their lives; most of them were self-employed or ran small businesses. A total of 15 armed robberies left many more people physically and psychologically injured.
The NSU carried out the murders and bombings in six different federal states. The fact that nine of the ten murders were committed with the same weapon and that nine of the ten victims had a history of migration suggested a connected series of murders. However, the police investigation did not assume a racist or neo-Nazi motive. Instead, they frequently stigmatized the victims themselves and insinuated connections to organized crime. Most media outlets adopted the police’s assumptions and reinforced them with discriminatory terminology. Even mainstream society failed to question the racist assumptions made by investigative authorities and in media coverage.
The NSU was not uncovered through successful investigative work by security agencies; rather, it exposed itself in 2011. Its unmasking shook society, as it revealed a dimension of right-wing terror, government failure, and racism previously unknown in postwar Germany. This series of murders—the largest spate of right-wing terrorist killings in the history of the Federal Republic—marked a turning point and shook the very foundations of how security agencies operate and how right-wing violence is addressed in Germany.
To this day, the NSU case has not been fully resolved. It is primarily thanks to the commitment of those affected by the attacks and the relatives of the murder victims—and to their strength and resilience—that progress has been made in coming to terms with the past. To this day, they continue to demand a thorough investigation and a dignified commemoration. Some regularly speak publicly about their experiences—including to school classes—or have written a book for young adults. They are all united by their call not to draw a line under the NSU case.
Why do we call it a complex?
We refer to it as the NSU complex because the NSU was not just a group of three. Its crimes were made possible by a neo-Nazi support network, as well as by societal and government failures. By definition, a complex is multifaceted, intertwined, and composed of many individual parts. The term shifts the focus from the individual crimes to the diverse actors who (helped) enable them.
The neo-Nazi scene played a central role in enabling the series of terrorist attacks. The NSU emerged from this scene, and it was from there that the group received crucial support for carrying out its crimes. This included renting apartments and vehicles, procuring the weapons used in the crimes, borrowing various identification documents, and obtaining money and contacts. A firmly held racist and neo-Nazi ideology, coupled with a willingness to enforce it through violence, was the driving force behind the crimes.
Yet other social groups were not free of racism either—albeit less fanatical and sometimes unconscious. Time and again, investigative authorities suspected the victims, their relatives, and the survivors themselves of being implicated in the crimes. In the eyes of the investigators, the victims’ ethnic background automatically made them prone to criminal behavior. The NSU case thus provides serious examples of institutional racism within Germany’s security agencies.
For the domestic intelligence agencies, protecting their informants—and thus maintaining their sources within the neo-Nazi scene—was more important than protecting the victims and preventing further murders. The media adopted the police’s racist preconceptions and used defamatory language in their reporting. Mainstream society did not recognize the racist nature of the murder spree until after the NSU exposed itself, unlike many migrants, who had assumed as early as 2006 that the perpetrators were right-wing extremists. The demonstrations under the slogan “No 10th Victim” in Kassel and Dortmund in the summer of 2006, attended by approximately 4,000 people, reveal this early realization, particularly on the part of the families of the murder victims.
The interaction among these different social groups enabled the NSU to carry out racially and neo-Nazi-motivated acts of violence undetected for more than 13 years.
