Over a period of ten years, a three-person cell of right-wing extremists targeted and executed Turkish and Greek small business owners all over Germany. Known as the Bosphorus serial murders, the National Socialist Underground (NSU) trio attacked minorities with homemade bombs, injuring dozens of people. Two of the extremists, Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, died in a botched bank robbery in 2011, and their accomplice, Beate Zschäpe, turned herself in after destroying their hideout. Among the remains, the police found a DVD with cynical videos of the executions. Klier’s talk on April 3 will explain the East German political context that supported the development of this cell. Zschäpe’s trial is set to start in April 2013.
Freya Klier is a prominent German political activist and documentary filmmaker. In 1988, the teetering East German government imprisoned and deported Klier for her dissident activism. She is well known for her documentaries about resisters against communism and fascism. Klier spends a good part of every year traveling to schools to teach the young generation about the GDR, and she also represents incarcerated writers for PEN. In 2012, Klier received the Bundesverdienstkreuz, Germany’s highest honor for civil service.
April 3 | Griffin 3, 7 PM
With generous sponsorship from the Departments of German and Russian, History and Political Science, the Oakley Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, the Program in Jewish Studies, the Bronfman Fund, and the Wiener Lecture Fund, the Gaudino Fund, the W. Ford Schumann ’50 Program for Democratic Studies, and the Center for Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.