Deutsche Aktionsgruppen
The Deutsche Aktionsgruppen were a far-right terrorist organisation founded in 1980 by the lawyer Manfred Roeder.
The terrorist cell's first two attacks were in Esslingen on an exhibition on the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. They then attacked the memorial site in the basement of the Janusz Korczak School on Bullenhuser Damm in Hamburg-Rothenburgsort where, in 1945, the SS had murdered prisoners from the Neuengamme Concentration Camp. Two women passers-by sustained minor injuries as a result of the explosion.
On the night of 22 August 1980, Sibylle Vorderbrügge and Raymund Hörnle, members of the Deutsche Aktionsgruppen terrorist cell, threw Molotov cocktails into a refugee shelter on Halskestrasse in Hamburg-Billbrook. The room in which two young men from Vietnam were sleeping was set ablaze. 22-year-old Nguyễn Ngọc Châu died of severe burns the following morning; 18-year-old Đỗ Anh Lân died nine days later.
It was the seventh attack by the Deutsche Aktionsgruppen which was founded by the lawyer Manfred Roeder. In February 1980, the group launched a series of attacks using Molotovs and bombs on exhibitions showcasing Nazi crimes and on refugee shelters in Lörrach and Leinfelden near Stuttgart, in Hamburg, and in the Bavarian town of Zirndorf.
Two members of the Deutsche Aktionsgruppen read the report about 29 asylum seekers being relocated to Hamburg. The article claimed that the city was ‘already overloaded with 9,000 asylum seekers’. That same night, they attacked the shelter mentioned in the article with Molotow cocktails.
Beforehand, the perpetrators spray-painted a racist slogan on the building. They had used the same paint in a prior crime, where a witness had noted down their license plate number. This clue led to them being apprehended a few days after the attack.
In 1982, the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court sentenced Sibylle Vorderbrügge and Raymund Hörnle, members of the Deutsche Aktionsgruppen, to life in prison. They had carried out the attack on the shelter at Halskestrasse in Hamburg that led to the deaths of Nguyễn Ngọc Châu and Đỗ Anh Lân. Manfred Roeder, as ‘ringleader’, was sentenced to thirteen years in prison; Heinz Colditz, a medical doctor, was given six years.
The ENT specialist Heinz Colditz from Kirchheim unter Teck near Stuttgart hid Manfred Roeder when the latter went into hiding. Incited by Roeder, Colditz and his former patient Raymund Hörnle carried out the first attacks by the Deutsche Aktionsgruppen. Roeder referred to the two men from Vietnam who died in the attacks as ‘half-monkeys’.
Preliminary proceedings against ten further suspects were handed over to the relevant public prosecutor’s offices. In 1983, the Hamburg District Court sentenced Gabriele S., daughter of Heinz Colditz, to four years in prison for the bomb attack on the Bullenhuser Damm Memorial in Hamburg; her husband Klaus-Peter S. was given a two-year suspended sentence.
