Community leader Max Privoroski says he was “never very optimistic about the situation in Germany.”
Photo: Copyright: MDR/Joachim Blobel
Judaism recognizes a variety of holidays, of which Yom Kippur is by far the most important. On the 10th of the religious month of Chiri, says Naomi Henkel-Gümbel, “the fate of everyone for the coming year is decided.” When the festival fell five years ago on October 9, 5780 in the Israelite calendar, not only Henkel-Gümbel’s fate for the coming period was decided, but also the fate of countless people across the country.
It was the day on which a heavily armed right-wing terrorist attacked the synagogue in the largest city in Saxony-Anhalt, where she wanted to celebrate the Holy Festival of Reconciliation together with 51 believers. It was the day when “everything changed” for Christina Feist too. In which “a crack” ran through the lives of all those affected “that will not heal again.” It was the day when a full 158 minutes, as a documentary about the attack was originally supposed to be called, left not only two dead, but the world around them in ruins.
It was the day when a full 158 minutes, as a documentary about the attack was originally supposed to be called, left not only two dead, but the world around them in ruins.
In three parts, “The Attack” traces the terror in Halle and Wiedersdorf. Almost 90 minutes of meticulous event analysis, in which Christoph Peters and Marie Landes put people of all kinds and all kinds of affected people in front of the camera. More on the fact that a few crucial ones are missing later. But a dozen contemporary witnesses, who were directly affected in various ways by the fascist madness of a sane perpetrator, also paint a disturbing picture of a holiday that ends in bloodbath.
Naomi Henkel-Gümbel and Christina Feist report in meticulous detail about the fight for survival behind the synagogue door, which miraculously withstood Stephan B’s shots exactly 81 years and one month after the “Night of the Reich pogroms”. Community leader Max Privoroski impressively reports how those trapped looked into the assassin’s face through a surveillance camera, “as if he were shooting at us.”
When it is said that two Americans in the house of worship recognized the threat with the very first shot, because shootings are normal in the USA, your blood freezes just as you listen to it, as does the sentence from a shopkeeper from the neighborhood kebab across the street. where the assassin randomly shot a guest. “My Syrian employee was sitting on the floor because of course she knew these noises,” says the businesswoman and hesitates briefly: “She comes from Aleppo.”
The eyewitness and earwitness reports from Halle or 20 minutes away by car in Wiedersdorf, where the attacker injured two people, are incredibly heartwarming. Despite all the impressions of those directly affected, “The Attack” goes far beyond mere victim narratives. With a bit of pathos, music and reenactment right up to the stylized slumping of the first murder victim, Jana Lange, the authors capture all aspects of this crime right up to the second rampage: that of social media.
They travel behind leaders to Tel Aviv or Paris and interview the surviving relatives of those killed, such as the father of the dead painter’s assistant Kevin Schwarze. They interview doctors and journalists, extremism researchers and victim counselors, Mayor Bernd Wiegand and Prime Minister Rainer Haseloff, who describes October 9, 2019 as the “darkest hour of my life.” They all talk, and often you feel like it’s a liberation. However, who remains persistently silent: Halle’s police.
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The very institution that is still heavily criticized today because of its hesitation, failures and communication policy, ARD and MDR doggedly refuse to make a statement, as they say in the credits. And so this documentary also leaves a bad aftertaste. In the short term, it is mitigated by the enormous solidarity in the city and country, Halle and Saxony-Anhalt. At the end of the three-part review, candlelight and seas of flowers, demonstrations and sympathy everywhere indicate that the 158 minutes might have set something in motion in the minds of the local people. Until you look at the subsequent election results.
A full two years later, almost 17,000 Halle residents helped make the AfD the second strongest state parliament party with 15 percent. And in the European elections in the spring, another 5,000 more people voted for the right-wing extremist stirrups of brown terror. As much as it influences the lives of all those affected to this day, in the end “The Attack” apparently changes nothing.
Available in the ARD media library
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