Gunman opens fire in German city of Hamburg - Brothers and Sisters Wounded

[Paulo]

1 hour ago, Parale said:

 

https://www.abendblatt.de/hamburg/politik/article241847550/Nach-Amoklauf-von-Hamburg-Man-soll-euch-alle-erschiessen.html

 

https://archive.is/HC3Yw

 

Thank you very much for sharing.

[jwnate]

This article was paywalled for me. Here's the Google Translate translation. https://archive.is/2024.03.08-043916/https://www.abendblatt.de/hamburg/politik/article241829432/Ein-Jahr-nach-Amoklauf-Wie-es-den-Ueberlebenden-heute-geht.html#selection-3411.0-3414.0 

 

One year after the rampage: How the survivors are doing today

3/7/2024 By Kai Schiller

 

Before we go upstairs, we pray again. Together. For strength, endurance and inner strength. Then take the elevator up. Up to the fourth floor. Eimsbüttel area. There are pastries on the conference table. There is coffee and water. And here the inexplicable is to be explained for an entire afternoon: How can one overcome such a drastic experience a year after what was probably the worst mass shooting of the post-war period in Hamburg?

 

This is not the first time that Mary, Kevin, Julian, Fee and Marcel have been in the editorial team of the Abendblatt. Around 100 days after the attack on their Jehovah's Witnesses community hall in Deelböge, they were here once and reported in detail about the traumatic evening that divided their lives into a before and an after.

 

Jehovah's Witnesses: March 9th marks the anniversary of the shooting spree

 

On March 9, 2023, Philipp F., formerly a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses community for a short time, shot seven people and then killed himself. 135 shots, six adults shot, one unborn baby killed in the womb. The massacre, which has since become known throughout Germany as the “Alsterdorf rampage,” lasted 16 minutes. And this Saturday marks the first anniversary of this dramatic event.

 

“I’m already excited and tense because I know this day is coming,” says Julien. “What helps me is that I don’t have to go through it alone.” Fee sits two places next to him: “I think it’ll get better when this day is over.” And Kevin is also unsure: “I know how we’re going to spend the day. But I don’t know what my emotional world will be like then.”

 

March 9th. For the six survivors, who are now allowing an insight into their inner lives and their emotional world in the evening paper for a second time, it is a date that is burned into their minds. As for the world, 9/11, the anniversary of the New York terrorist attack.

But can you continue living after surviving?

 

Gunshot victim Jonathan tries to banish negative thoughts

 

One can. At least that's what Mary, Kevin, Jonathan, Julian, Fee and Marcel say. Let your faith help you. God. The religion. And of course the community too. “I try to focus on the positive,” says Fee’s husband Marcel. “But that doesn’t always work.” Jonathan nods. “I tried to banish the negative thoughts last year,” he says. “That often worked, but of course not always.”

 

Physically, Jonathan was hit the hardest of the survivors on March 9th a year ago. The father of the family was riddled with five bullets and had to undergo emergency surgery; he was on the operating table a total of six times. “My injuries have healed,” he said a year later. Physically he is often at his limit, but at least things aren't getting any worse. Only: “The psychological aspect sometimes sneaks up on you unnoticed. You then need this resilience, as they say today.”

 

Mary knows exactly what Jonathan means. “You have good days and bad days,” she says.
Mary laughs a lot and loves it. Others say she is a “ray of sunshine”. But since March 9th, the sun has sometimes set on Mary too. For example, the day after New Year's Eve. “Suddenly there were these booming noises again,” she says. “You expect it on New Year’s Eve, but not really the day after. And they got me thinking about March 9th extremely quickly.”

 

Breakfast together on the anniversary, a devotion later

 

Mary and her husband Kevin want to go to the new Kingdom Hall of their church in Eidelstedt early on Saturday. We will have breakfast together, pray, and remember those who were killed. We will mourn together, but also laugh together. “I am happy that we don’t have to get through this day alone, but that we are together.”

 

In the afternoon there is a prayer service where the whole community comes together. “I'm also worried because I can't quite predict what the day will be like emotionally for me,” says Fee. “My wish is that on this day the sadness and the joy are balanced. The joy of the beautiful memories of those we lost that day.”

 

In the faith of Jehovah's Witnesses, the victims will live on. Isaiah 26:19 says, “Jehovah promises that the dead will live again.”

 

Kevin: “I miss our friends a lot”

 

Belief in the afterlife also helps survivors. And at the same time they also miss their brothers and sisters in faith. “I miss our friends very much. “Their laughter, the moments we shared,” says Kevin. “When I see a photo of them, it comes up quickly.”

 

The air is now stagnant in the Eimsbüttel area. When one speaks, the others listen. Nod. Wipe your eyes. Nobody grabs the cookies. As a listener, you quickly sense how difficult it must be to talk about everything you've experienced again. But almost everyone says talking helps. But the pain of the memories of those who won't come back doesn't go away.

 

“I consciously separated dealing with grief from dealing with the night of the crime,” says Jonathan. “I don't want to combine this attack with the very personal grief of my friends. I make a point of making time to remember my friends. I usually do this with my family because it’s too difficult for me alone.”

 

Nobody has been at their friends' graves yet. Not because they don't want to. But because they can't do it yet. At some point the moment will come when they will gather all their strength, says Jonathan. Mary says that she already feels this need within herself. She would like to go to the Ohlsdorf cemetery and visit each of her friends who have received an official grave there.

 

Fee and Julien are still receiving therapeutic treatment

 

She and her husband Kevin went through therapy that helped them. Now they will take a break for the time being. Marcel and Jonathan have so far waived the offer, Fee and Julien are still being treated.

 

“I sometimes have very sad days and feel numb,” says Julien. “Last time we met, I said I wanted to be more patient with myself. But over the months I realized that it’s not that easy.”
It's good that he feels like he's gotten to know himself better over the past year. The bad thing is that his resilience and concentration are no longer the same as before. Nevertheless, six months after the rampage, he slowly began to reintegrate into work. His doctor advised him to do this. At the beginning it was very little, but now it has reached four days a week.

 

“I said last time that there is now a new everyday life for me,” says Julien. “And I still notice that.” This new everyday life includes a lot of encouragement, but also rejection. Little, but still too much.

 

Marcel was approached on the street and insulted

 

Marcel had an experience that he can't get out of his head. It was months ago, but he couldn't forget it. “I get annoyed with myself because I just can’t get these negative thoughts out of my head,” he says.

 

A passer-by came up to him on the street and asked him “whether I could reconcile it with my conscience to stand here as a Jehovah’s Witness and talk about the Bible. After all, other bystanders could also be affected next time. I tried to ignore him at first, but he didn't want to leave and kept talking. I could only shake my head, I was paralyzed.”

 

Marcel isn't the only one this has happened to. The fundamental increase in hate crime incidents is a problem for society as a whole. Among the Jehovah's Witnesses, who still have a difficult image even after the rampage, the number of hate comments increased significantly nationwide after the attack.

 

The six don't want to think about the why, wherefore or how come. Their faith and their religious community are good for them. But you also know that there are others who still have major reservations. The main accusations: The Bible translation is taken almost literally, people stick too strictly to the early Christian models, only keep to themselves and deal very rigidly with those who have dropped out.

 

Jehovah's Witnesses are recognized as a corporation under public law

 

It only helps the witnesses to a limited extent to point out that the religious community has been recognized as a corporation under public law in all German federal states since 2017 and is therefore on an equal footing with the churches. Even the fact that the Bundestag recently publicly apologized to Jehovah's Witnesses for their persecution during the Nazi era rarely leads to a rethink.

 

Marcel shrugs his shoulders. Immediately after the shooting, he read a lot, inhaled all the newspaper articles and listened to podcasts. “But at some point it was enough,” he says. The so-called cult experts who spoke on television the day after the rampage, the perpetrator-victim reversal that he often read about, he no longer wanted to let any of that get to him.

 

In general: the perpetrator. This afternoon at the Great Burstah, he is not even talked about. Nobody mentions his name. Nobody talks about possible oversights in advance. About the weapons authority, which received an anonymous letter before the rampage and is apparently responsible for serious errors in judgment.

 

When asked whether anyone among them had noticed that the proceedings against employees of the Hanseatic Gun Club, where the later perpetrator had his weapon license issued, had just been dropped, only Marcel replied: “I have accepted this silently Noticed."

 

Jonathan: “We live in a dramatically broken world”

 

A year after the rampage, it is very clear that those who survived the evening need all their energy to continue living. They have no place for hatred, retaliation and similar things. “We live in a dramatically broken world. On the one hand,” says Jonathan. “And on the other hand there is so much humanity, love, consideration. I received so much encouragement that it blew my mind and was extremely good for me.”

 

Jonathan is the only one who wasn't in the Abendblatt editorial team at the first meeting after the shooting rampage nine months ago. He was unable to attend due to work, but then rescheduled the meeting in a café in HafenCity. Now he also wants to go to the roof terrace, where the other five friends were last year, to enjoy the view over the town hall, the city center and the harbor.

 

Jehovah's Witnesses want to go to the roof terrace for the evening paper

 

So from the fourth to the eighth floor. It's like the lives of the six last year. Somehow things always progress, little by little. “I reached my limits much more quickly,” says Kevin. “I had to work a lot on myself. For me that means I take it one day at a time. Small steps. This is important for me. But every day it gets a little better.”

 

On the roof terrace, cell phones are pulled out and photos are taken. Here the Elbphilharmonie, there the Michel. “Hamburg is so incredibly beautiful,” says one of the group. You can see everything from up here. Also the permanent construction sites, the scaffolding, the cranes. But if you focus on the positive, you can ignore the negative. At least almost.

 

Jonathan reports on two days when he felt really bad last year. “I don’t want to downplay all the good things in the rest of the year,” says Jonathan, whose life hung by a thread on the night of March 9th to 10th. His lesson from these two days, which took a toll on him: “Negative thoughts can destroy you.” He tries everything “so that these negative thoughts don’t eat me away.”

 

The amazing thing is that all six survivors manage to do this relatively well. Julien still has nightmares sometimes, but only rarely. Fee can finally sleep well again. And thanks to the therapy, Mary is no longer afraid of the dark, no longer afraid of being alone.

 

The conversations a year later were intense

 

The afternoon is over. There is a lot of joking and laughing when we take a photo together on the nearby Marion Gräfin Dönhoff Bridge, and jokes and jokes are also made on the roof terrace. But the conversations in the Eimsbüttel area were intense and exhausting.

 

The afternoon gets down to business. And yet one more thing is important to all six at the end of the conversation: to say thank you. The doctors at the Asklepios Clinic Barmbek who saved Jonathan's life. The emergency services who were on site after a few minutes on March 9th. The families, the pastors, the friends, the neighbors.

 

Jehovah's Witnesses hope for closure after anniversary

 

“I would ideally like to end the whole process with the anniversary,” says Fee. “But I know that doesn’t work. And yet I also know that we are where we are now because we have received so much support.”

 

On the roof terrace. And especially in life. From March 10th things should get a little more normal again. Mary, Kevin, Jonathan, Julian, Fee and Marcel will laugh, cry, mourn, remember, work, have fun, be angry and pray again. Maybe they will dance again. Like Fee and Marcel, who have been dancing in their own living room for a year.

 

“Too rare,” says Fee. “But every now and then,” says Marcel.
 

[Osprey]

On 8/19/2023 at 8:05 PM, Osprey said:

https://www-kleinezeitung-at.translate.goog/steiermark/suedsuedwest/6315929/Polizei-bittet-um-Hinweise_In-Leibnitz_Sprengsaetze-an-zwei?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

 

Two explosive devices were attached to cars of brothers in Austria. Thankfuly nobody was hurt. Above link should machine translate to english language.

Congregation very near us...

 

New incident in Austria, bomb was discovered in front of KH during Friday meeting before it exploded, it is reported that it had "enormous explosive power".

 

https://kurier-at.translate.goog/chronik/steiermark/grosseinsatz-kalsdorf-graz-steiermark-zeugen-jehovas-verdaechtiges-paket/402839473?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

[Paulo]

Thank you for sharing.

[Sofia]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/explosive-device-found-jehovahs-witness-173717519.html

[student]

https://tvthek.orf.at/profile/Spaet-ZIB/79134/Spaet-ZIB-vom-30-03-2024/14220162/Bombe-vor-Gebaeude-der-Zeugen-Jehovas/15609855

 

[Regular]

Um. what did he say? 

[Skye]

On 4/1/2024 at 9:46 PM, Regular said:

Um. what did he say? 

Something similar to what’s here: https://www.northweststar.com.au/story/8574520/explosives-found-at-jehovahs-witness-austria-meeting/

[jrnievas]

23 minutes ago, Skye said:

Something similar to what’s here: https://www.northweststar.com.au/story/8574520/explosives-found-at-jehovahs-witness-austria-meeting/

 

1. Harmburg

2. India

3. Austria

 

.... tsk tsk

[Paulo]

On 4/9/2024 at 6:08 AM, jrnievas said:

 

1. Harmburg

2. India

3. Austria

 

.... tsk tsk

1. Hamburg

2. India

3. Italy

4. Austria

5. Austria