“I helped my family, we escaped on our own. Immediately after the attacks, our Roma people, relatives and members of our community, when they found out about the attacks, they came to help us, many with their own cars.“1
A history of silencing
The escape from the burning Sonnenblumenhaus (Sunflower House), together with his wife Leonora and their five children and then, immediately afterwards, the drive away from Lichtenhagen, organized by other Roma – this is how Marian Dumitru remembers the racist attacks in August 1992, which are now considered the largest pogrom in German post-war history. From August 22 to August 24, hundreds of violent individuals attacked former contract workers from Vietnam as well as asylum seekers to the applause of thousands of people.2
It had already taken Marian Dumitru and his family over two weeks to get from Romania to Poland. They then crossed the green border from Poland to Mecklenburg Western Pomerania and arrived at the Zentrale Aufnahmestelle (Central Reception Center, ZASt) in Rostock-Lichtenhagen. As Roma in post-socialist Romania, he and his family had previously been subject to racist marginalization and extreme poverty. In Germany, they now hoped to find a better and safer life, especially for their children’s sake.
The fact that Marian Dumitru talks about his memories in an interview is anything but a matter of course. Despite the pogroms great symbolic significance and presence in the media, almost nothing was known for decades about the asylum seekers who were attacked in the ZASt. Most of them had presumably left Mecklenburg Western Pomerania soon after the pogrom – due to the tightening of asylum laws, deportations and everyday right-wing violence. Their perspectives hardly played any role in the numerous media reports and the few academic studies on the pogrom.3 Institutionalized racism and racially structured discourses intertwined and enabled the decades-long silencing of one of the two main groups affected by the pogrom.
This makes the retrospective documentation and visualization of the testimonies of those affected, e.g. by means of oral history interviews, all the more important. Although these interviews cannot be classified as “self-testimonies” written on their own initiative, but rather as “ego documents”, they do make it possible to reconstruct the perceptions, interpretations, assessments and actions of those affected. Actual self-testimonies in the form of letters or diaries by affected asylum seekers are not known so far.
Thanks to the cooperation with Roma self-organizations and researchers from Germany and Romania, the “Lichtenhagen im Gedächtnis” (Lichtenhagen in Memory) Documentation Center since 2022 has been able to conduct interviews with several of those affected who come from Roma communities in southern Romania and who experienced the pogrom as asylum seekers in the Lichtenhagen Reception Centre. On the 31st anniversary of the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen in August 2023, these eyewitnesses spoke for the first time at a public talk in Rostock Town Hall.4
For us as Rostock residents researching the pogrom in Lichtenhagen, the stories told by those affected uncover entirely new perspectives on the event. Moreover, they raise entirely new questions.
Self-defence and continuities of persecution
In his initial quote, Marian Dumitru recounts saving himself from the burning Sunflower House. This aspect of the event shows up in several of the interviews. In our own reconstructions of the pogrom, however, we have so far assumed that all asylum seekers from the ZASt were evacuated from the house on the third day of the pogrom before it was set on fire. We have not yet been able to fully reconstruct the situation described by the witnesses. This inability says a lot about the state of academic research on the pogrom in Lichtenhagen.
Marian Dumitru also remembers being picked up from Rostock-Lichtenhagen in cars by other Roma. This story of a self-organized and self-determined departure from the city was also completely unknown until now. Both stories illustrate the effectiveness of the self-protection measures employed by victims of right-wing violence and the simultaneous failure of the state’s police forces. This is an obvious parallel to the self-rescue efforts of the Vietnamese victims on the third day of the pogrom who escaped by crossing the roof of the burning Sunflower House.5
However, fleeing Rostock did not result in a successful escape from racist violence. Marian Dumitru recalls further attacks that were so severe that he eventually returned to Romania: “In every Roma populated area, these notices were every day. They arsoned, they attacked, they came after us. I stayed five or six months more, until one point when I could not resist anymore. I left. I left and there is a saying: The way I left from home, the same way I returned.“6
This story demonstrates that the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen was neither an exceptional phenomenon nor an isolated case but must be seen in a wider context of other attacks. It is precisely for this reason that contemporary historical research should shift its focus away from the events that are present in the media and towards the “small” attacks, the forgotten pogroms and the everyday nature of right-wing violence.
At the end of the interview, Marian Dumitru draws a broad historical arc. When asked how he would reflect on the attacks in Rostock today, he replies: “What can I say? I have studied up until the 10th grade. I have read previously about the Second World War, and I know what happened, and what they did to the Roma people. Reflecting upon this event, I think they wanted to do the same to us. “7
This reference to the persecution of Roma under national socialism seems obvious. Under Ion Antonescu’s military dictatorship, an ally of Nazi Germany, more than 25,000 Roma were deported to Transnistria and at least half of them were murdered. The Romanian Roma attacked in Lichtenhagen very probably included survivors of the Nazi genocide as well as their children and grandchildren. In studies on the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen, the continuity of racist violence8 has so far only played a role – if at all – at the level of ideology.9 What significance this continuity could have for those personally affected by both has not even been asked so far.
Bearing witness – for whom?
Since his return to Romania, Marian Dumitru has lived with his family in the southern town of Craiova. For a long time, he and his wife Leonora worked together at the city’s market run by Roma.10 The market was closed by the city council in the summer of 2023 to make way for a charging station for electric buses. Despite political efforts, there is still no alternative space for the market. As a result, dozens of families lost their only source of income.11
This treatment of the Roma community in Craiova is just one example of the ongoing discrimination in Romania. One consequence of this is the migration of children and grandchildren of those affected by the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen – now often no longer to Germany, but to the USA, where they find themselves in the same cycles of illegalization and violence as their parents did thirty years earlier.12
Over the past two years, those affected from Craiova have invested a lot of time and energy in giving interviews or traveling to events in Rostock. The perspectives of the eyewitnesses from Romania have significantly shaped and expanded the research and remembrance of the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen since 2022. For local politics and civil society, it is a symbolic gain when affected Roma speak at commemorative events. For us as researchers, it adds entirely new perspectives and questions, such as those described above. We benefit in many ways from the testimonies of those affected. This creates an imbalance between scientific and commemorative utilization without offering direct benefits for the affected. This can be understood as part of the continuity of Gadjé racist structures described above.
This issue makes it even more urgent to ask what kind of responsibility local forms of commemoration and research bear. Izabela Tiberiade, herself the daughter of two survivors of the pogrom, formulated clear demands at the commemorative event in August 2023 in Rostock City Hall.13 These include equal participation of the community in Craiova in educational and research projects, formal cooperation between the cities of Rostock and Craiova and support in establishing contacts with the Vietnamese community in Rostock. A critical reappraisal of the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen that goes beyond the academic and commemorative use of the testimonies of those affected must consider these demands.
Translation: Nils Bergmann
References
- Interview with Marian Dumitru from July 12, 2022, Documentation Center “Lichtenhagen im Gedächtnis”, lines 93–95. Available at: https://vimeo.com/786397714. Originally in Romanian Romanes. The translation into English was provided by the interviewer Izabela Tiberiade.
- You can find more information on the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen in our web documentation: app.lichtenhagen-1992.de
- See also the article by Emilia Henkel on the neglect of the perspectives of asylum seekers in contemporary historical research.
- The interviews and a recording of the event can be viewed online: https://app.lichtenhagen-1992.de/betroffene-romnja-aus-rumaenien/
- Dan Thy Nguyen, Eine geteilte Community. Kalter Krieg, Mauerfall und die vietnamesische Migrationsgeschichte, in: Lydia Lierke, Massimo Perinelli (eds.), Erinnern stören. Der Mauerfall aus migrantischer und jüdischer Perspektive, Berlin 2020, 405–422, here 419.
- Interview with Marian Dumitru, lines 117–120.
- Interview with Marian Dumitru, lines 136–138.
- We have decided to use the term “Gadjé racism” here in order to characterize the practitioners of racism. Gadjé is a Romanes term for non-Roma. The term “Gadjé racism” thus marks the people from whom the racism emanates and not the people affected, unlike the term “antiziganism”, for example. The latter contains the racist designation of others and emphasizes the power of stereotypes. Roxanna-Lorraine Witt: Gadjé Rassismus. Ein analytischer Perspektivwechsel auf Kontinuitäten menschenfeindlicher Ideologien in weißer Kultur und Identität, in: Onur Suzan Nobrega, Matthias Quent, Jonas Zipf (eds.): Rassismus. Macht. Vergessen. Von München über den NSU bis Hanau. Symbolische und materielle Kämpfe entlang rechten Terrors, Bielefeld 2021, 125–144, here 129f.
- Stephan Geelhaar, Ulrike Marz, Thomas Prenzel, “… und du wirst sehen, die hier wohnen werden aus den Fenstern schauen und Beifall klatschen.”. Rostock-Lichtenhagen als antiziganistisches Pogrom und konformistische Revolte, in: Alexandra Bartels, Tobias von Borcke, Markus End, Anna Friedrich (eds.), Antiziganistische Zustände 2. Kritische Positionen gegen gewaltvolle Verhältnisse. Münster 2013, p. 140–161.
- Jean-Philipp Baeck, Allegra Schneider, Die verschwundenen Roma, in: taz. die tageszeitung, August 26, 2022, https://taz.de/30-Jahre-Rostock-Lichtenhagen/!5874650/, accessed on January 3, 2024.
- Valentin Tudor, Dispare Târgul de Săptămână din Craiova?, in: Gazeta De Sud, August 22, 2023, https://www.gds.ro/Local/2023–08-22/dispare-targul-de-saptamana-din-craiova/, accessed on January 3, 2024.
- Soziale Bildung Rostock, Zeitzeug*inneninterviews mit überlebenden Rom*nja des Pogroms in Rostock-Lichtenhagen 1992 / Izabela Tiberiade im Gespräch, in: Vimeo, 2022, https://vimeo.com/776250704, 00:26:07–00:28:43.
- Soziale Bildung Rostock, Hauptzeug*innen des Pogroms in Rostock-Lichtenhagen (26.08.2023 im Rathaus Rostock), in: Vimeo, 2023, https://vimeo.com/877792187, 00:30:01–00:37:16.