The Gap 2.0

2021 marks the 17th anniversary of the nail bomb attack that shook Keupstrasse in 2004. The bombs severely injured 22 people; several critically. For years after, investigations were carried out exclusively among residents. Victims and their relatives were stigmatised as potential perpetrators. Indications that the attacks were racially motivated were in part actively concealed by police investigators.

The director Nuran David Calis developed the play THE GAP in 2014, together with three residents and three ensemble actors, so that the people whose lives were deeply shaken and transformed by the attacks could have their voices heard. When THE GAP premiered, the trial against the members of the so-called Nazi Underground in Munich had just begun. It was to last 5 years in total and concluded with a devastating verdict for the relatives of the victims – many of the accused came away with very light sentences and some were free to go immediately after the trial ended. When the guilty verdict was published last spring, the lawyers of the murder victims complained that the verdict had failed to give them a face.

In THE GAP 2.0, an adaptation of the original production, the three victims from Keupstrasse were interviewed again after seven years. How do they perceive the NSU court verdict and the guilty verdict? What is the current status regarding the memorial, the place of remembrance and education nearby Keupstrasse, which is still in its planning stages? And what is it like to live in Germany after the attacks in Halle, Hanau, Chemnitz and Kassel?