Photo Gallery Germany's Problem with Xenophobic Arson
The tragic fire in Ludwigshafen and its questionable origins have raised the specter of the fire that killed five Turkish females in Solingen in 1993, and a string of other arson attacks on foreigners. The eastern German city of Hoyerswerda was the site of one such incident in 1991.
In September of that year, a mob of rightist extremists roved the streets of the town -- whose population has declined drastically in the two decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall -- looking for foreigners and attacking their homes. In this photo from that day, a worker from Mozambique looks out a window from the building burned by the racist mob.
A year later, in August of 1992, a mob of over a thousand young right-wingers rioted in Rostock -- which is also in the former East Germany -- and set fire to a home for asylum seekers.
Images from the act of racist arson were seen around the world. Rostock, along with Solingen and Hoyerswerda, became notorious examples of Germany's mistreatment of foreigners.
A young participant in the Rostock riots fired a gas gun. Rostock is still combating its image as a city intolerant of foreigners and minorities -- there have been other instances of xenophobic violence in the city since 1992.
On Nov. 23, 1992, two right-wing extremists threw Molotov cocktails into a home in Mölln, igniting a fire that killed two Turkish girls as well as their grandmother.
Turkish friends and relatives grieved over the coffins of the three victims at their funeral in 1992. The two men who set the blaze, ages 19 and 25 at the time, were later sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of murder and exceedingly malicious arson.
Fifteen years after the fire, the young victims' father held a vigil outside the site of his family's tragic destruction. He is pictured at a memorial to his family with a relative.
The infamous Solingen fire, set by right-wing arsonists in May of 1993, killed two women and three young girls, all of Turkish descent. The Solingen incident was the peak of the grim spate of anti-immigrant arson that began in Hoyerswerda.
Durmus Genc (left) and his son Bekir Genc (center), both injured in the Solingen attack, appeared at the arsonists' trial in Düsseldorf.
Ten years later: then-German president Johannes Rau (right) attended a dedication ceremony for a memorial for victims of the Solingen attack. He is pictured with his wife, Christina and an unidentified young girl.
In 1996, an arson attack decimated a home for refugees in Lübeck. Four right-wing radicals with singed eyebrows and hair were found near the scene of the crime -- but the case remains officially unsolved.
