Nguyễn Ngọc Châu and Đỗ Anh Lân from Saigon fled war-torn Vietnam by boat. Nguyễn Ngọc Châu was taken on board by the German rescue ship Cap Anamur in the South China Sea. Đỗ Anh Lân arrived at a camp on a Malaysian island and, thanks to an aid campaign launched by the German weekly newspaper "Die Zeit", was flown to Hamburg in August 1979. In 1980, 18-year-old Đỗ Anh Lân and 22-year-old Nguyễn Ngọc Châu were both living at a refugee shelter on Halske­strasse in the Billbrook district of the city. On the night of 22 August, members of the Deutsche Aktionsgruppen threw a Molotov cocktail into their room as they were sleeping. Both suffered severe burns and later died of their injuries.

The teacher Nguyễn Ngọc Châu was born on 26 July 1958 in Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam. After being rescued by the Cap Anamur, he arrived in Hamburg in April 1980. He died of his burns on 22 August 1980, a few hours after the arson attack on the shelter on Halskestrasse.

Đỗ Anh Lân, born in Saigon on 10 March 1962, was a member of the Chinese minority in Vietnam. He fled the country to escape military service and intended to bring his family to join him later. His flight, funded by the family savings, lasted two years. He succumbed to his burns nine days after the arson attack.
400 mourners attended the funeral of the murdered refugees. The eulogy was given by Hans-Ulrich Klose, First Mayor of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. By this point the per­petrators had been found and six members of the Deutsche Aktionsgruppen were under arrest.

Gisela and Heribert von Goldammer volunteered to help the two young men. They were also in ­contact with Đỗ Anh Lân’s mother Đỗ Mui. By the time she was allowed to immigrate to Germany, her son was already dead:

For 34 years, there was no memorial to the racist attack in Halskestrasse. In 2014 survivors and relatives, together with the Initiative for the Remembrance of Nguyễn Ngọc Châu and Đỗ Anh Lân, began organising annual memorial events. They call for the street and the Halskestraße bus stop to be renamed after Nguyễn Ngọc Châu and Đỗ Anh Lân and for a memorial plaque to be erected at the crime scene.

Nguyễn Ngọc Châu and Đỗ Anh Lân were buried in the Öjendorf cemetery. Their graves were levelled after 25 years with no advance notice to the relatives.

In 2020, a memorial by the artist Vān Ngân Hoàng commemorating the two murdered men was erected at the Öjendorf cemetery. In 2022, the district of Hamburg-Mitte promised to rename a section of Halskestraße to Châu-und-Lân-Straße.