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Deutsche Welle (21 February 2020)

A day after a gunman killed nine people with an immigrant background in Hanau, the western German city is grappling with anger, fear and mourning. Helena Kaschel reports.

Hanau Attacks: What Motivated the Perpetrator?

Melissa Kaynak stands pensively in front of a kiosk in central Hanau. Diagonally across the street is the Midnight shisha bar, sealed off with a police cordon. On the corner opposite, people have laid candles and bouquets of flowers. Slowly, the empty street fills with journalists and passersby. An eerie calm hangs over the kiosks, snack bars, and gambling halls of the neighborhood where, one night earlier, a suspected right-wing extremist shot several people dead.

The social worker with Turkish roots went to the bar for the very first time shortly after the crime took place. She was looking for her brother, who sometimes hangs out there. "I couldn't reach him on his phone and I was worried. That's why I came in person."

Kaynak says she comforted a girl who had been in shock, and prayed with eyewitnesses amid the police cars and ambulances.

Melissa Kaynak says racism should be a topic of discussion in German universities and schools

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