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The Sunflower House – radio play and talk

The riots in Rostock-Lichtenhagen between the 22^nd and 26^th August 1992 were the most massive racially motivated attacks in Germany since the end of the Second World War. Under slogans like “Germany for the Germans! Foreigners out!”, an alliance of Rostock residents and Nazis who had come especially for the occasion besieged the Central Reception Centre for Asylum Seekers (ZASt) and the hostel for Vietnamese contract workers. Up to 3000 applauding spectators hindered the police and fire brigade. More than a hundred Vietnamese and anti-fascist supporters narrowly escaped death in the burning building. At the peak of the attacks, the police temporarily withdrew completely and those trapped in the burning house were left defenseless and had to fend for themselves.

In 2011, Dan Thy Nguyen and Iraklis Panagiotopoulos began searching for former Vietnamese contract workers who had survived the Rostock-Lichtenhagen pogrom. For almost three years they travelled all over Germany to interview people. The transcribed interviews were used to produce the play and later the radio play “Das Sonnenblumenhaus”.

The radio play will be followed by a discussion with representatives of the Dien Hong association (to be confirmed), which was founded by the victims themselves as a reaction to the pogrom.

The event is part of the week-long series of events and the exhibition “Germany your children – continuities of right-wing violence”, which will take place on the occasion of the 30^th and 31^st anniversary of the pogroms in Rostock-Lichtenhagen and Hoyerswerda from the 17^th – 23^rd September.

 

Das Sonnenblumenhaus

By: Dan Thy Nguyen und Iraklis Panagiotopoulos
With: Claudiu M. Draghici, Jan Katzenberger, Djamila Manly-Spain
Director: Dan Thy Nguyen