„This makes me want to remember the future“
Shining a new light on the OEZ attack
July 22, 2016, seemed like any other summer Friday evening in Munich – until the shocking news of a right-wing extremist attack at the Olympia shopping center (Olympia-Einkaufszentrum, or OEZ), in what was initially interpreted as a random mass shooting. Blurry smartphone videos, unconfirmed information, and diffuse reports dominated social media.
From one moment to the next, the mood in the entire city turned to one of grim, anxious tension. Munich-based artist and filmmaker Cana Bilir-Meier captures this contrast between gloom and the lighthearted fun of a shopping spree to impressive impact in This Makes Me Want to Predict the Past. In the video, filmed in black and white and with very low light, three girls – Aleyna Osmanoğlu, Sosuna Yildiz, and Berfin Ünsal – explore the shopping center. With their Kurdish and Turkish roots, the three of them fit the profile of the victims: young people from immigrant backgrounds. The three girls act out scenes from the play Düşler Ülkesi (Land of Dreams) while trying out clothing, accessories, and cosmetics – the typical things teenagers do at the mall.
At the same time, Bilir-Meier also films the scenes of the attack, including the McDonald’s restaurant where the 18-year-old perpetrator, David (Ali) S., had lured teens with an invitation posted on his fake Facebook profile. He shot at a six-person group of children and teens, killing five and leaving a 13-year-old with life-threatening injuries. Outside the restaurant, on Hanauer Strasse, he fatally shot two more people and severely injured three others. Moving south down the street, he shot another person to death before entering the mall at ground level, killing one more person, and finally shooting himself after fleeing for hours. Almost all of the nine people killed had immigrant backgrounds; seven of them were Muslim, one was Roma, and the other was Sinti.
Bilir-Meier’s film starts with a scene on the stairs leading from the underground station to the Olympia shopping center. The young actors look into the camera, and the phrase “This makes me want to predict the past” is heard. At that moment, the girls look up at an advertising column. The only thing seen there is a poster featuring a single word: “War.”
At this point, the timeline is still completely unclear. The audience does not know whether the attack is about to start or is already over. This creates an interesting suspense, which is finally released shortly before the final credits roll, when the scenes of the attack and the memorial to the victims are shown. The performers take the audience along on a shopping trip while tracing the attack around the mall. Individual phrases are heard along the way, most of them starting with “this makes me...” They are YouTube comments on musician Childish Gambino’s song “Redbone,” riffing on a line of the song’s lyrics. Each one is spurred by a desire to turn reality on its head. Examples include “This makes me let my food eat me,” “This makes me fall and hurt the ground,” and “This makes me wanna call someone and say I can‘t talk.”
[Translate to English:]
Schweigen ist zu hören bei der Einblendung der Tatorte und des Denkmals für die Attentatsopfer mit dem Titel „Für Euch“ der Künstlerin Elke Härtel. Im letzten Teil des Films, der dem Leben nach dem Attentat gewidmet ist, ertönt eine Hoffnung gebende, von Nihan Devecioğlu und Gustavo Kusnir vertonte Musik. Das Leben mit dem Verlust ist für die Angehörigen von Sevda Dağ, Chousein/Hüseyin Dayıcık, Selçuk Kılıç, Giuliano Josef Kollmann, Can Leyla, Janos Roberto Rafael, Armela Segashi, Sabina Sulaj und Dijamant Zabërgja schmerzhaft. Erschwerend kommt hinzu, dass das rechtsextreme Tatmotiv von David (Ali) S. lange Zeit offiziell nicht als solches bestätigt wurde, sondern die Tat als Amoklauf, ausgelöst durch psychische Probleme als Folge von Mobbing, galt: Schon wenige Tage nach der Tat war aber bekannt, dass S. ein „Manifest“ verfasst hatte. In ihm erklärte er, er wolle „ausländische Untermenschen“, die er auch mit Ungeziefermetaphern beschrieb, „exekutieren“. Rasch drang an die Öffentlichkeit, dass S. stolz auf seine angeblich „arische“ Herkunft (seine Eltern stammen aus dem Iran) sowie auf sein Geburtsdatum 20. April sei, das er mit Adolf Hitler gemeinsam hatte. Jahrestage faszinierten ihn, sodass er für seine Tat den 5. Jahrestag des rechtsextremen Attentats von Utøya und Olso mit 77 Toten wählte.
Although the right-wing extremist sentiment of the perpetrator was established, the state criminal police and public prosecution classified the act in their final report from March 2017 as a “random mass killing”. An investigative report issued by the Bavarian state interior ministry in April 2017 also stated that the main motivation had been “revenge” for bullying. Representatives of the victims' relatives and members of the state parliament, especially from the SPD and the Grüne, called for a reassessment of the case. Three expert opinions commissioned from different experts by the Munich municipal authority tasked with upholding democracy reached a different conclusion: that the act had been one of right-wing extremism or terrorism. (1) The German Federal Office of Justice ultimately ruled the act one of right-wing extremism in March 2018. The families were notified.
By then, the majority of the perpetrator’s Internet activity had also been clarified, providing evidence of contact with right-wing extremist groups. In October 2019, the state criminal police revised their views as well. Since then, the case has been considered a right-wing “politically motivated violent crime."(2) The reassessment helps the victims’ families and the survivors in two ways: first, they can cope better with the loss knowing the reason behind it, and second, they may now be eligible for support services. The memorial dedicated to the victims at the shopping center is to receive a new inscription in the fall of 2020 to reflect the new view: “In memory of all victims of the racist attack of July 22, 2016.” The original inscription read, “In memory of all victims of the mass killing of July 22, 2016."(3)
Migration does not protect people against racism – not even internalized racism. Bilir-Meier has that in mind when she says
“I think it’s important for us to examine the racism in our own communities [...] The young man who carried out this racist attack had an immigrant background himself.”
In this way, Bilir-Meier’s work urges all of us to engage in self-reflection.(4) It calls on us to examine our own prejudices and listen to those who share their experiences with racism. The audio track for This Makes Me Want to Predict the Past also includes the sentence “This makes me want to remember the future” – which touches on a key motif of the exhibition titled Tell me about yesterday tomorrow: thinking about the connections between past, present, and future, and about the social function of remembrance.
By Angela Hermann, research associate at the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism
Sources
(1) https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/amoklauf-oez-muenchen-1.3693124 [6.8.2020]
(2) https://www.polizei.bayern.de/lka/news/presse/aktuell/index.html/304761 [6.8.2020]
(3) https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-oez-attentat-denkmal-inschrift-1.4946887 [6.8.2020]
(4) https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/kuenstlerin-cana-bilir-meier-geschichte-antirassistischer.2156.de.html?dram:article_id=479887 [6.8.2020]
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![[Translate to English:]](/fileadmin/_processed_/b/f/csm_Nacht-Samborski_200120-Tell-me-about_583_web_76a55a26a2.jpg "[Translate to English:]")
„This makes me want to remember the future“
Shining a new light on the OEZ attack
July 22, 2016, seemed like any other summer Friday evening in Munich – until the shocking news of a right-wing extremist attack at the Olympia shopping center (Olympia-Einkaufszentrum, or OEZ), in what was initially interpreted as a random mass shooting. Blurry smartphone videos, unconfirmed information, and diffuse reports dominated social media.
From one moment to the next, the mood in the entire city turned to one of grim, anxious tension. Munich-based artist and filmmaker Cana Bilir-Meier captures this contrast between gloom and the lighthearted fun of a shopping spree to impressive impact in This Makes Me Want to Predict the Past. In the video, filmed in black and white and with very low light, three girls – Aleyna Osmanoğlu, Sosuna Yildiz, and Berfin Ünsal – explore the shopping center. With their Kurdish and Turkish roots, the three of them fit the profile of the victims: young people from immigrant backgrounds. The three girls act out scenes from the play Düşler Ülkesi (Land of Dreams) while trying out clothing, accessories, and cosmetics – the typical things teenagers do at the mall.
At the same time, Bilir-Meier also films the scenes of the attack, including the McDonald’s restaurant where the 18-year-old perpetrator, David (Ali) S., had lured teens with an invitation posted on his fake Facebook profile. He shot at a six-person group of children and teens, killing five and leaving a 13-year-old with life-threatening injuries. Outside the restaurant, on Hanauer Strasse, he fatally shot two more people and severely injured three others. Moving south down the street, he shot another person to death before entering the mall at ground level, killing one more person, and finally shooting himself after fleeing for hours. Almost all of the nine people killed had immigrant backgrounds; seven of them were Muslim, one was Roma, and the other was Sinti.
Bilir-Meier’s film starts with a scene on the stairs leading from the underground station to the Olympia shopping center. The young actors look into the camera, and the phrase “This makes me want to predict the past” is heard. At that moment, the girls look up at an advertising column. The only thing seen there is a poster featuring a single word: “War.”
At this point, the timeline is still completely unclear. The audience does not know whether the attack is about to start or is already over. This creates an interesting suspense, which is finally released shortly before the final credits roll, when the scenes of the attack and the memorial to the victims are shown. The performers take the audience along on a shopping trip while tracing the attack around the mall. Individual phrases are heard along the way, most of them starting with “this makes me...” They are YouTube comments on musician Childish Gambino’s song “Redbone,” riffing on a line of the song’s lyrics. Each one is spurred by a desire to turn reality on its head. Examples include “This makes me let my food eat me,” “This makes me fall and hurt the ground,” and “This makes me wanna call someone and say I can‘t talk.”
[Translate to English:]
Schweigen ist zu hören bei der Einblendung der Tatorte und des Denkmals für die Attentatsopfer mit dem Titel „Für Euch“ der Künstlerin Elke Härtel. Im letzten Teil des Films, der dem Leben nach dem Attentat gewidmet ist, ertönt eine Hoffnung gebende, von Nihan Devecioğlu und Gustavo Kusnir vertonte Musik. Das Leben mit dem Verlust ist für die Angehörigen von Sevda Dağ, Chousein/Hüseyin Dayıcık, Selçuk Kılıç, Giuliano Josef Kollmann, Can Leyla, Janos Roberto Rafael, Armela Segashi, Sabina Sulaj und Dijamant Zabërgja schmerzhaft. Erschwerend kommt hinzu, dass das rechtsextreme Tatmotiv von David (Ali) S. lange Zeit offiziell nicht als solches bestätigt wurde, sondern die Tat als Amoklauf, ausgelöst durch psychische Probleme als Folge von Mobbing, galt: Schon wenige Tage nach der Tat war aber bekannt, dass S. ein „Manifest“ verfasst hatte. In ihm erklärte er, er wolle „ausländische Untermenschen“, die er auch mit Ungeziefermetaphern beschrieb, „exekutieren“. Rasch drang an die Öffentlichkeit, dass S. stolz auf seine angeblich „arische“ Herkunft (seine Eltern stammen aus dem Iran) sowie auf sein Geburtsdatum 20. April sei, das er mit Adolf Hitler gemeinsam hatte. Jahrestage faszinierten ihn, sodass er für seine Tat den 5. Jahrestag des rechtsextremen Attentats von Utøya und Olso mit 77 Toten wählte.
Although the right-wing extremist sentiment of the perpetrator was established, the state criminal police and public prosecution classified the act in their final report from March 2017 as a “random mass killing”. An investigative report issued by the Bavarian state interior ministry in April 2017 also stated that the main motivation had been “revenge” for bullying. Representatives of the victims' relatives and members of the state parliament, especially from the SPD and the Grüne, called for a reassessment of the case. Three expert opinions commissioned from different experts by the Munich municipal authority tasked with upholding democracy reached a different conclusion: that the act had been one of right-wing extremism or terrorism. (1) The German Federal Office of Justice ultimately ruled the act one of right-wing extremism in March 2018. The families were notified.
By then, the majority of the perpetrator’s Internet activity had also been clarified, providing evidence of contact with right-wing extremist groups. In October 2019, the state criminal police revised their views as well. Since then, the case has been considered a right-wing “politically motivated violent crime."(2) The reassessment helps the victims’ families and the survivors in two ways: first, they can cope better with the loss knowing the reason behind it, and second, they may now be eligible for support services. The memorial dedicated to the victims at the shopping center is to receive a new inscription in the fall of 2020 to reflect the new view: “In memory of all victims of the racist attack of July 22, 2016.” The original inscription read, “In memory of all victims of the mass killing of July 22, 2016."(3)
Migration does not protect people against racism – not even internalized racism. Bilir-Meier has that in mind when she says
“I think it’s important for us to examine the racism in our own communities [...] The young man who carried out this racist attack had an immigrant background himself.”
In this way, Bilir-Meier’s work urges all of us to engage in self-reflection.(4) It calls on us to examine our own prejudices and listen to those who share their experiences with racism. The audio track for This Makes Me Want to Predict the Past also includes the sentence “This makes me want to remember the future” – which touches on a key motif of the exhibition titled Tell me about yesterday tomorrow: thinking about the connections between past, present, and future, and about the social function of remembrance.
By Angela Hermann, research associate at the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism
Sources
(1) https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/amoklauf-oez-muenchen-1.3693124 [6.8.2020]
(2) https://www.polizei.bayern.de/lka/news/presse/aktuell/index.html/304761 [6.8.2020]
(3) https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-oez-attentat-denkmal-inschrift-1.4946887 [6.8.2020]
(4) https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/kuenstlerin-cana-bilir-meier-geschichte-antirassistischer.2156.de.html?dram:article_id=479887 [6.8.2020]