Relatives of victims shot dead in two shisha bars told of their grief today as Berlin ramped up efforts to tackle the rising tide of far-right violence.
Nine men and two women died when Tobias Rathjen, 43, launched his attack in Hanau, a suburb of Frankfurt, on Wednesday night.
The victims were Turks, a Romanian, Kurds, a Polish woman and a Bosnian — immigrants marked for “extermination” by the Right-wing fanatic, including a 35-year-old pregnant mother-of-two.
Rathjen, who had written a 24-page racist manifesto featuring hate-filled propaganda, then returned home to kill his 72-year-old mother before taking his own life.
Ferhat Unvar, 20, had just finished training as a mechanic in a plumbing firm when he was shot at the Arena bar.
His father Metin described him as “our pride and joy”. “Ferhat had his life ahead of him,” he said.
“Our grief is immeasurable. Germany must now stick together. We never thought that something like this would happen in this country, which is our home. We must not start a war now, we must remain calm.”
A Polish-Roma mother-of-two called Mercedes was apparently shot as she entered the bar next to the kiosk where she worked.
A cousin said: “She was a lovely person. Words cannot begin to explain how we feel.”
Victim Muhammed Beyazkendir, 20, was in hospital recovering from life-saving surgery after being shot. He described the attack as “a bloodbath”.
“We heard gunshots from outside. Five or six. Then I saw the gunman outside the Arena. He held a gun with two hands, ran into the place and killed everyone there. And then he came over to us, shot the first one he saw in the head. He fell over. And then he screamed. I fell on a colleague, and one fell on me... We were a mountain of people.”
Turkish media named some of the victims as Bilal Gokce, Sedat Gurbuz, Agrı Eleskirtli and Bulgarian citizen Kolayan Velkov. Bosnian-born Hamza Kutovic, 20, was also said to be among the dead.
Thousands gathered in cities across Germany to hold vigils for the victims amid mounting concern about Far-right extremism reflected in earlier attacks and the rise of the anti-migrant party Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
The government was meeting today to discuss new measures to combat rising hate crime.
