After only three days, the B. family fled the town of Lieberose. Out of fear of neo-Nazis, single mother Enisa B. tells DW. What really happened in that small town in the far east of Germany?

The dream of a better life brought Enisa B. and her four children to the German provinces. At the end of July this year, they moved from Berlin to Lieberose, a town of around 1,400 inhabitants in Lusatia (Lausitz), about 30 kilometers from Cottbus. But their dream very quickly turned into a nightmare.

“We arrived there on 27 July. It was a Thursday. Everything started a day later, on Friday evening. The children were already asleep, and suddenly someone started knocking on the window. I thought it was some drunk. But he wasn’t drunk. He raised his hand and shouted ‘Heil Hitler’ at me, I froze with fear,” Enisa tells DW.

As she later found out, it was her new neighbor. After the initial shock, she managed to pull herself together a little: “I tried to calm him down. I closed the window and went to the front door to talk to him. I didn’t dare go outside the apartment. And then he shouted ‘Heil Hitler’ again and raised his hand, showing me their salute.”

“This is my town!”

As Enisa goes on to say, she asked him why he had come and what he wanted from her. “He told me: This is my town! Pack your things and go back to your country! Back to where you came from! He started yelling, he was quite hysterical. I just wanted him to calm down and told him I would pack my things tomorrow and return to Berlin.” After that he just said “OK!” — and left. Enisa locked the door and says she didn’t sleep a wink that night.

She didn’t know what to do. She thought everything would calm down. But nothing calmed down. A day later, it was Saturday, the caretaker came by to finish a few things in the freshly renovated apartment. His daughter was with him. “She asked my daughter if she wanted to come over to their place so they could play a little. I told her I wasn’t sure, that I didn’t know the people in that town, that I didn’t know anyone!”

After the shock of the previous evening and the incident she had told the children nothing about, Enisa was afraid something might happen to her daughter. But she still allowed her to go, on the condition that she not stay long with her new friend.

At around half past eight in the evening, her daughter called her and her mother told her to head home. “I told her to take the street that was brighter; there was another one that was darker. She said OK and set off. Then suddenly she called me and said there was a group of people standing in the street. I just told her not to look at them and to keep walking toward home. And then the connection was cut off…”

Fear of neo-Nazis

As Enisa B. tells us, at that very time two men were visiting her, her relatives, as she says. She asked one of them to go meet her daughter, and her son went with him. They left, and Enisa continued with the housework; the other man stayed with her. At one moment, she herself doesn’t know why, she looked out the window toward the street and saw her children and relative running toward the apartment.

“And behind them was a group of people running after them, chasing them, they had some kind of chains in their hands, I jumped out through the window, I had nothing in my hands. I started running toward them. I told my daughter and son to go into the house and lock themselves in. Luckily my neighbors from the first floor also heard that something was happening and they ran out into the street. And they started shouting in the direction of this group to leave us alone, that I was a single mother. Then my other relative came too, he had a hammer in his hand, and they started running away.” After that, together with the neighbors, they literally barricaded themselves inside the apartment, fearing another attack.

While talking about these events, Enisa B. pauses from time to time, saying that even today she trembles as those images pass through her mind, everything she and her family experienced just a few days ago in the far east of Germany. She claims the attackers were local neo-Nazis who, she assumes, wanted to intimidate her family and force them to leave Lieberose. Her neighbors, she says, told her that Saturday evening that they had long known both the man who had knocked on her window and the group of younger people who had chased her children in the street.

“They told me there are two neo-Nazi families in the town. And that their grandfathers were Nazis too. So where have I come to? Why didn’t anyone tell me, why didn’t they warn me?”

Asylum in Berlin

Enisa B. comes from Tuzla. She came to Germany in 2015 with her three daughters (who are now 16, 13 and 12 years old). She filed an application for asylum. In the meantime, she met a German man, became pregnant by him, had a fourth child and stayed in Berlin. The relationship did not last long, however. With the father of her son (now 7 years old), she still has, as she emphasizes, a good relationship; they see each other regularly, he visits them, and takes care of their child together. She is no longer in contact with the father of her three daughters, whom she had been married to in BiH.

“Life in Berlin was not easy, as a single mother I had to do everything myself, back then I didn’t even know German well, I understood almost nothing, someone always had to interpret for me, for example when social workers came.”

For a while, Enisa B. lived with the children in a shelter in Berlin. Then she found an apartment in the Schöneweide district, on the southern edge of the German capital. “It was a tiny apartment, with two rooms. A kitchen, a balcony, and those two little rooms with four children. But that was better for us than life in a shelter.”

Life in an expensive city

She spent seven or eight years in Berlin-Schöneweide. She received social assistance. The children started school, but the apartment was cramped, the 33-year-old tells us; they had neither space nor peace for homework and studying. She tried to find slightly larger accommodation with the help of the relevant city services, but she did not succeed. Berlin is expensive, and the housing situation is tense.

“And then a colleague told me to look on eBay, that they offer apartments there too. And that’s how I found an apartment, I immediately called the man who was renting it out, and he immediately asked me when I could come by and see what the apartment looked like.”

Enisa traveled to Lieberose, immediately liked the apartment, everything had been renovated, there was plenty of space for the children: four rooms, two bathrooms, a garden. She also liked that neighborhood. It wasn’t noisy like Berlin, a small and peaceful place, she tells us.

“But if someone had told me something like this would happen to me, I would rather have continued living in those two little rooms in Berlin. In Schöneweide no one ever said anything nasty to my children and me. I can’t sleep at night, I stay awake until three or four in the morning, and then I get up at six.”

Enisa is not the only one traumatized; the children also suffered a shock: “My seven-year-old son is now afraid to go to the toilet by himself, he wets his pants out of fear. Out of fear. I always have to be with him.”

For Enisa B., Lieberose is a closed chapter. Already on Sunday, only three days after moving to that place, she gathered the children and returned to Berlin. And on Monday she went to Lieberose by herself, went to the police and reported what had happened. In the meantime, she has also given a statement.

Two versions of the story?

A spokeswoman for the South Brandenburg police headquarters confirmed to broadcaster rbb that “several investigations” had been launched on suspicion of racist attacks and threats against the Bosnian family. The investigation is still ongoing, and a group of six young people is in the sights of the German authorities; they are accused of racially insulting a minor in the center of Lieberose, making threats, and there is also suspicion of causing bodily harm.

In addition, the German judiciary is also targeting the 45-year-old man who knocked on her window and who is accused of using unconstitutional symbols. According to local media reports from eastern Germany, he is known in Lieberose by the nickname “Hitler.”

An investigation has also been launched against two men from Enisa’s circle, her relatives, as she says. “We have to clarify what really happened,” the police spokeswoman said. According to her, the statements of Enisa’s family members and the group of younger men about what happened in the center of Lieberose differ considerably. The dpa agency writes that police are also examining allegations that one of those two men physically attacked the young people. He has, it is further stated, been reported on suspicion of causing injuries.

Martina Vesely from the organization “Opferperspektive,” which helps the Bosnian family, is not surprised by that. “In numerous cases of right-wing violence, there is an attempt to reverse the roles of victim and perpetrator. They file reports in order to divert the focus from what they did,” Vesely told rbb. A few days ago, the association “Opferperspektive” published information about this case on Twitter, after which numerous German media outlets reported on it.

Rise in right-wing violence

Although the police investigation is still ongoing, especially on social media many users believe that the “Lieberose case” reflects the current situation in Germany regarding the rise in intolerance toward foreigners. The number of politically motivated right-wing criminal offenses rose significantly in the federal state of Brandenburg alone in the first half of 2023. According to official data, the Brandenburg Ministry of the Interior registered 1,049 cases from January to June. That is roughly one-third more than in the same period last year.

Across Germany as a whole, according to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, 23,493 right-wing motivated criminal offenses were registered in 2022 (an increase of 7% compared with the previous year). The number of left-wing politically motivated acts amounted to 6,976 — that is, 31% fewer than in 2021.

Mentioning those figures, Enisa B. says in her interview with DW that she currently has other worries. Her family is now housed in a shelter, in a room with five beds. They are back at the beginning again. She is looking for a new apartment in Berlin. Although she is exhausted and tired, she says that despite the nightmare from Lieberose, she still dreams of a better life for herself and her four children.

Source: dw.com