Wielding just nail-polish remover, a camera and an “Against Nazis” tote bag, Irmela Mensah-Schramm is a one-of-a-kind fighter against Germany’s increasingly threatening far-right scene.
She works alone but is one of a growing number of grassroots activists stepping in to what they says is the gulf left by the authorities. The “muck”, as she calls the graffiti, uses a clutch of hateful slogans: “Foreigners out”, “Germany for the Germans”, even “Gas the Turks”. Their cause was highlighted by the bombshell revelation in November that a neo-Nazi gang was behind the unsolved murders of 10 people, mainly shopkeepers of Turkish origin, between 2000 and 2007.
Categories: Europe, Germany, Human values, Interfaith tolerance, Islamophobia