Directory of the Dead Antifascists


In memory of their work for a liberated society and to carry on their legacy, the anti-fascists and victims of fascist violence are gathered here with their stories, which are mentioned in the play SCHWARZER BLOCK. No forgiving, no forgetting!

Amadeu Antonio: was a contract worker in the GDR and worked in a slaughter and processing combine. He lived in Eberswalde in Brandenburg. There he was beaten into a coma in 1990 by neo-Nazis for racist motives. He succumbed to his injuries a few days later. Antonio was one of the first known victims of right-wing violence after the fall of the Wall. The perpetrators were sentenced to a maximum of four years in prison for dangerous bodily injury resulting in death, instead of murder. This sentence was often criticized as insufficient by anti-racists and anti-fascists.

Ramazan Avcı: was murdered in 1985 by right-wing skinheads in Hamburg. The 26-year-old, together with his brother and a friend, was attacked by a group of neo-Nazis outside a restaurant. While his two companions were able to flee, the attackers injured Avcı so badly that he died of his injuries.

Mahmud Azhar: was a research assistant for biochemistry at the Freie Universität Berlin. In 1990, the 40-year-old was racially insulted by a person on the university campus and was knocked down with a fire extinguisher. Two months later he died as a result of the attack.

Olga Benario-Prestes: Born in Munich in 1908, she was a communist and Jewish. At the age of 20 she freed her partner Otto Braun from the criminal court in Moabit. After her military training in Moscow, she was sent to Brazil on behalf of the Comintern, where she became the bodyguard of the Communist insurgent Luiz Carlos Prestes. In 1936 she was arrested and handed over to the National Socialists. After years in the Lichtenburg and Ravensbrück concentration camps, she was gassed in the Euthanasia Centre Bernburg in 1942.

Jorge Gomondai: Born in 1969, worked in a slaughterhouse in Dresden. In 1991, he was racially insulted, attacked and presumably thrown from the moving streetcar by a group of young Nazis in a streetcar in Dresden's Neustadt district. A cab driver and his passengers provided first aid. Gomondai died of his injuries almost a week later. He was the first victim of a racist murder after reunification.

Delfin Guerra and Raúl Garcia Paret: were two Cuban contract workers who drowned in Merseburg in the Saale river in 1979. They were involved in a brawl between GDR citizens and contract workers. While fleeing, they jumped into the Saale, but were still thrown at with bottles and stones from the bank. The »Initiative 12 August« organizes an annual memorial demonstration. The crime has not been solved to this day.

Gökhan Gültekin: was one of the victims of the racist murders in Hanau on February 19, 2020. The 37-year-old was born in Hanau and worked as a tiler and part-time in a kiosk. 

Sedat Gürbüz: was one of the victims of the racist murders on 19 February 2020 in Hanau. The 30-year-old was the owner of the Shisha Bar Midnight, where he also worked on the evening of the attack. 

Said Nesar Hashemi: was one of the victims of the racist murders in Hanau on February 19, 2020. He was born in Hanau and trained as a machine and plant operator. He was 21 years old at the time of the attack. His brother survived seriously injured.

Mercedes Kierpacz: was one of the victims of the racist murders in Hanau on February 19, 2020. She was born in Offenbach and lived in Hanau, where she worked in the kiosk. On the evening of the attack she was actually off duty and just wanted to buy something at the kiosk where she was shot. She became 35 years old and had two children.

Kamal Kilade: was murdered by two neo-Nazis in Leipzig in 2010. He was 19 years old at that time. Since then, an annual memorial demonstration and a memorial plaque commemorate the racist act.

Hamza Kenan Kurtović: was one of the victims of the racist murders in Hanau on February 19, 2020. He was born in Hanau, where he completed his training as a warehouse clerk in 2019. The perpetrator shot him while he was waiting for a friend just outside the Arena Bar.

Jana L.: was shot during the anti-Semitic and racist attack in Halle on October 9, 2019, when she was addressing the perpetrator who was trying to enter the synagogue. She was 40 years old at the time of her death and lived near the synagogue in Halle.

Gustav Landauer: born in 1870, was a writer, communist, and anarcho-pacifist. During the November Revolution he went to Munich to take part in the revolution there. In the Socialist Bavarian Soviet Republic proclaimed on April 7, 1919, he became commissioner for popular enlightenment, but he resigned disappointedly after a few days. After the violent suppression of the soviet republic in early May, Freikorps soldiers murdered him.

Rosa Luxemburg: born in 1871, was a communist, anti-militarist, feminist and important representative of the labor movement. She was initially a member of the SPD, but then broke with it in protest against its approval of World War I. After the November Revolution of 1918, she fought for a social revolution and the establishment of a soviet republic. In 1919 she was a co-founder of the KPD and helped organize the Spartacus Uprising. After its suppression, she and Karl Liebknecht were murdered by Freikorps on the orders of the SPD.

Silvio Meier: was an anti-fascist activist in the »Kirche von Unten« and active in the peace movement of the GDR. He lived in a squatted house in Schreinerstraße in Berlin-Friedrichshain and worked in a neighboring print shop. On the way to the disco, Silvio Meier and three friends met a group of young neo-Nazis in the night of November 21, 1992, in the Samariterstrasse subway station, with whom they had a confrontation. When the group around Silvio Meier later wanted to leave the subway station, they met the right-wing youths again. They suddenly draw knives and stab Silvio Meier and his companions. Silvio Meier died shortly afterwards from his serious injuries. Until 2018 an annual antifascist memorial demonstration with several thousand participants took place. 

Helene Overlach: born 1894 in Greiz, worked as a stenotypist for the KPD, among others. In addition, she was a clerk, auxiliary nurse and commercial teacher. Since 1925, she had served as second chairwoman and de facto head of the Rotfrontkämpferbund, the armed combat unit for women of the KPD, alongside Clara Zetkin. In 1927 she was appointed to the Central Committee of the KPD and headed the women's department. She was one of the few women who sat in the Reichstag, where she became known primarily for her consistent action against the NSDAP. 

Vili-Viorel Păun: was one of the victims of the racist murders on 19 February 2020 in Hanau. He grew up in Romania and lived in Hanau for several years, where he worked as a parcel delivery driver. He was shopping in a kiosk when he was murdered at the age of 22.

Rudolf Rocker: born 1873 in Mainz, Germany, was an anarchist, syndicalist and author. He founded the »Internationale Arbeiter-Assoziation«. After the National Socialists seized power, he fled to the USA into exile, where he died in 1958.

Fatih Saraçoğlu: was one of the victims of the racist murders on 19 February 2020 in Hanau. At that time he was 34 years old. Three years earlier he had moved from Regensburg to Hanau. On the evening of the crime he dropped off a friend at the Heumarkt and was murdered in the Shishabar Midnight.

Günter Sare: was run over by a water cannon in 1985 during an antifascist demonstration, the occasion of which was a meeting of the NPD in the Gallus-Haus in Frankfurt am Main, and died. This was followed by nationwide protests, which, especially in Frankfurt, were accompanied by massive clashes with the police and major property damage. The police officers who drove the water cannon were acquitted. 

Kevin Sch.: was murdered during the antisemitic and racist attack in Halle on October 9, 2019, when he was taking his lunch break in a snack bar. He had started an apprenticeship with a painting company shortly before. He was 20 years old at the time of the attack.

Ufuk Şahin: was stabbed to death by a Nazi in front of his front door in the Märkisches Viertel in 1989. The act triggered a debate about racist violence. In the weeks that followed, anti-fascist, Turkish, Kurdish and autonomous groups called for demonstrations in which up to 8,000 people took part in Berlin. 

Enver Şimşek: born on December 14, 1961, was the owner of a flower shop in Schlüchtern in Hesse. On September 9, 2000, he was shot down at his mobile flower stand in Nuremberg. Two days later he died in a hospital due to his severe injuries. He was the first victim of the terrorist organization, National Socialist Underground (NSU). Şimşeks Relatives were represented in the NSU trial by the lawyer Seda Başay-Yıldız, who has been receiving death threats since 2018, which are signed with the code NSU 2.0.

Hermann Schnallnaß and Fritz Glatt: On March 13, 1920, there is a Kapp-Lüttwitz coup against the Weimar Republic. But the majority of the population fights for its survival. The largest general strike in German history takes place. The putschists have nothing to oppose the political will of twelve million strikers; the coup collapses. In many places armed conflicts also take place. However, the situation remains confusing in the first few days. In this context, an armed confrontation at a barricade at Kottbusser Tor took place on March 17, 1920. Two of those fighting there against the right-wing putschists are Hermann Schnallnaß and Fritz Glatt. Hermann Schnallnaß, a locksmith from Neukölln, died at the age of 63 on barricades in Kreuzberg. Fritz Glatt was 17 years old when he died. He lived in the Skalitzer Straße and was a locksmith apprentice.

Ernst Thälmann: was a coachman, dock worker, party and union official in Hamburg. Among other things, he headed the Red Front Fighters' League, the armed combat unit of the Communist Party. From 1925 to 1933 he was chairman of the KPD. He was arrested in 1933 and then murdered in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944.

Ferhat Unvar: was one of the victims of the racist murders on 19 February 2020 in Hanau. At that time he was 23 years old and had just completed training as a gas and water plumber. He was murdered when he spent the evening with friends in the Arena Bar.

Kaloyan Velkov: was one of the victims of the racist murders in Hanau on February 19, 2020. He grew up in the Bulgarian city of Mezdra and moved to Hanau a few years ago. He worked among other things in the bar La Votre at the Heumarkt. 

Conny Wessmann: died in Göttingen in 1989 in a car accident resulting from a police operation. That evening she was with other anti-fascists in downtown Göttingen to demonstrate against rioting right-wing skins. Her group was expected by plain clothes police on their way home. She fled and was run over by a car on the country road. Both the police officer and the driver were acquitted. The following memorial demonstrations led to protests and riots in downtown Göttingen.

Halit Yozgat: was the ninth and presumably last victim before the NSU's self-disguise. Shortly before his assassination, he had opened an Internet café in Holländische Strasse in Kassel. There he was shot dead by the NSU on April 6, 2006, while Andreas Temme, a constitutionalist, was present. The course of events and Temme's involvement have not yet been clarified. After the murder of Halit Yozgat, his relatives and friends organized a silent march with the title »No 10th victim«, in which 4000 people participated. His family and activists have been fighting for years to rename the Holländische Strasse as Halitstraße.

Clara Josephine Zetkin: was born on July 5, 1857 in Wiederau. She was a socialist-communist politician, peace activist and women's rights activist. In the SPD, she belonged to the wing of the revolutionary Marxist faction and criticized the Social Democrats' policy of condoning war. During the November Revolution in 1918, she was active in the Spartacus League, which merged with other left-wing revolutionary groups into the newly founded KPD at the turn of 1918-1918. She sat for them in the Reichstag until the National Socialists seized power. In early 1933 she went into exile in the Soviet Union, where she died on June 20, 1933, at the age of almost 76.


To the play Schwarzer Block