German clubs remember victims of terror attack in Hanau one year ago

German clubs remember victims of terror attack in Hanau one year ago

One year after the racist attack with nine dead in Hanau, the city commemorated the victims with a memorial service. There were commemorations in many other German cities as well, such as in the Berlin district of Neukölln, where thousands of people remembered the victims of the racist attack in Hanau a year ago.

On February 19, 2020, a 43-year-old right-wing extremist had shot nine people and injured five others in Hanau for racist motives. He then killed his mother Gabriele Rathjen and himself. Using the hashtag #saytheirnames, the victims Gökhan Gültekin, Sedat Gürbüz, Said Nesar Hashemi, Mercedes Kierpacz, Hamza Kenan Kurtović, Vili-Viorel Păun, Fatih Saraçoğlu, Ferhat Unvar and Kaloyan Velkov were commemorated. Not all circumstances of the racist act have been clarified yet. For example, it is unclear why emergency calls were not answered and emergency exits in one of the bars into which the perpetrator entered were locked.

Many German football clubs have remembered the victims of the far-right attack. The players of Eintracht Frankfurt wore jerseys with the faces and names of those killed during the warm-up before the Bundesliga match against FC Bayern Munich. “We have the portraits of the murdered people from Hanau and their names on the shirts. These are not numbers, these are people. We want to say clearly: we are not talking about numbers. We are talking about people who were bestially murdered”, said Eintracht President Fischer in “Heimspiel”.

Eintracht Frankfurt striker Amin Younes celebrated his goal against Bayern Munich by holding up one of the shirts.

Other clubs, including many EFDN members, shared the names of the victims on Social Media and urged fans and followers to take a stand against racism and for an inclusive society.