Unser Schmerz ist unsere Kraft: Neonazis haben unsere Väter ermordet

As part of the 18th Düsseldorf Reading Festival, we cordially invite you to a reading followed by a discussion:

Gamze Kubaşık and Semiya Şimşek lost their fathers in the series of murders committed by the right-wing terrorist group NSU. On September 9, 2000, Enver Şimşek was murdered in Nuremberg, and on April 4, 2006, Mehmet Kubaşık was murdered in Dortmund by the far-right terrorist group 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.

In this reading,Gamze Kubaşık —together with co-author Christine Werner —will speak about her family history, her father, the NSU complex, and her joint struggle with Semiya Şimşek for truth and remembrance. She recounts how she experienced the harrowing events at the time and how the murders tore her away from her former life. But she also describes how, together with Semiya Şimşek, she was able to draw on an immense strength that continues to drive them both to fight on to this day: against forgetting and for a future free of exclusion.

The book *Our Pain Is Our Strength* —nominated for the 2026 German Youth Literature Prize—addresses these issues and the work of remembrance. Until the NSU’s so-called “self-exposure” in November 2011, the victims’ families were not taken seriously by law enforcement agencies, government officials, and politicians—as well as by parts of the media—and were left to fend for themselves and even suspected of being involved in the murders and attacks themselves.

The ignorance and false accusations directed at the victims and their families were often shaped by racist attitudes. Their demands for a thorough investigation into the NSU’s crimes and the neo-Nazi network behind them were not met in the years that followed; to this day, the role played by domestic intelligence agencies and law enforcement authorities in the NSU complex remains unclear.

The reading will be moderated by Ali Șirin.

___________

A joint event organized by the Düsseldorf Municipal Integration Center and the Düsseldorf Adult Education Center.