During riots in Chemnitz in 2018, neo-Nazis injured the Jewish restaurant manager Uwe Dziuballa. How is the landlord three years after the attack? FR author Andreas Förster met him.
You don’t have to ask Uwe Dziuballa for a photo session in front of the entrance door of his Chemnitz restaurant “Schalom”. The tall 56-year-old stands upright in front of the door, a big smile on his face, his hands defiantly in his pockets. Such a person, as promised by this picture, cannot be intimidated and driven away. Or is the impression wrong? At the end of our long conversation, the Chemnitz Jew Uwe Dziuballa will give two opposing answers to this question. They stand for the turmoil of many Jewish Germans in these times, who on the one hand want to lead a normal and respected life in this country, on the other hand have to endure more and less hidden gestures of hatred and contempt every day. And sometimes pure violence. Like Uwe Dziuballa.
In a few weeks, the trial of a 29-year-old man from Stade near Hamburg will begin before the Chemnitz district court. The right-wing extremist with a criminal record is said to have thrown stones from a group of masked people at the Jewish restaurant “Schalom” on August 27, 2018, hitting the owner, who stepped outside, on the shoulder and injuring him. Slogans like “Judensau” and “Disappear from Germany” were shouted.
Dziuballa doesn’t want to say a lot about the alleged perpetrator. He prefers to talk about his family. His ancestors come from Krakow, they came to Prussia in 1732. “Our family was already here before the German Reich was founded.” During National Socialism, the family was torn apart, some were able to flee, others were murdered, and some survived the Holocaust undetected. Uwe Dziuballa himself was born in 1965 in Karl-Marx-Stadt, as Chemnitz was called in GDR times. Here he did his Abitur and then studied electrical engineering / electronics. After reunification, he completed an apprenticeship at Deutsche Bank in Cologne and then went to the USA as an investment broker. At the end of 1993 he returned to his hometown. Seven years later he opened the “Schalom” in downtown Chemnitz, which now has a reputation beyond national borders as one of the best kosher restaurants in Germany.
It hit the headlines almost three years ago, but because of the neo-Nazi attack. “Basically I don’t give a shit who it was back then,” says the landlord. “And if it had been frustrated gay vegans. In my world, in which I want to live, you don’t throw stones at people. ”Dziuballa grins. And waits for the effect of his words. Is his counterpart shocked? “I don’t like to talk about it,” he says finally. “It may be that what and how I say it is not always politically correct. But I am not always dealt with correctly. “
He opens his laptop, shows photos and small video snippets. Swastikas carved into the door of the “Schalom” can be seen, anti-Semitic graffiti, smashed restaurant signs, flowers torn from the terrace, a Rudolf Hess poster on the door. People walking past the restaurant and showing the Hitler salute. And a pig’s head that strangers laid in front of the door of the “Schalom” one winter night. Snow lies on the severed head, a painted Jewish star can be clearly seen. In another video, Dziuballa’s wife can be seen walking past a group of people in a park shouting “Sieg Heil!”
The host closes the laptop again. “Every year we are told by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution whether the number of right-wing extremists has risen or fallen,” he says. “I don’t care at all. I only know that the sum of the graffiti on my restaurant, the disgusting letters and calls in which my employees and I are insulted as ‘dirty Jews’ who should be ‘gassed’ or at least ‘chased away’ has remained constant every year is. And many of the authors do not appear in any statutes for the protection of the constitution because they are not officially registered neo-Nazis. “
The worst thing for him and his family was that the police did not take these attacks seriously until a few years ago. “We felt like troublemakers. I could literally feel the officials thinking: ‘This Jew again!’ When I came to the police station to file a complaint. “All of his complaints fizzled out and the proceedings were discontinued after a short time. Apparently because they didn’t make any effort to clear up what was going on, as Dziuballa suspects.
In July 2012, he wrote an open letter to the Chemnitz police chief: In it he sarcastically apologized for bothering the officers with his affairs in the past and promised not to do the police any more work by telling the anti-Semitic Assaults on himself and his restaurant will no longer be reported in the future. The response of the authority? “Nothing. Nada. I never got an answer. Once, when I met the police chief at one of those city receptions to which I am gladly invited as a model Jew, I wanted to talk to him about it. But when I ran up to him, he turned away. “
Nevertheless, Dziuballa believes, his letter made the police think. With the new police chief, who took office in 2013, the patrols past his restaurant had been intensified, he had now been greeted in a friendly manner and people had tried to get into conversation with him. “There was more attention to be felt, more affection.” But he still avoided going to the police when there were again attacks. “There was no trust back then. I didn’t turn to the police for help – until August 27, 2018. “
And then we are with the events that will now be the subject of the trial. On that August day, on the sidelines of a demonstration in downtown Chemnitz, the worst riots in Saxony had occurred in recent years. The reason for the demonstration was the violent death of a Chemnitz citizen who had been stabbed by an asylum seeker. Violent right-wing extremists and hooligans from all over Germany had come to the so-called funeral march, and leading AfD members marched by their side. After the demonstration, there were occasional hunts for alleged migrants: inside, the police and the press were also attacked. Small groups rioted through the city until late in the evening. This also resulted in the targeted attack on the “shalom”.
“I noticed that there was a lot going on in the city that day, but it was quiet on our side street,” recalls Uwe Dziuballa. The last guests left the restaurant around 9:30 p.m., only two acquaintances stayed for a glass of red wine. “We were just about to end the evening and I went to the entrance to lock up. It was already dark, and when I stepped outside a group of people was standing on the sidewalk directly in front of me, like a wall. ”He felt scared and harassed, also because he hadn’t seen the partly masked faces. Suddenly various things flew around his head, it had “really pattered”. A stone hit him on the right shoulder.
The group then withdrew to the other side of the street. Dziuballa took photos with his cell phone with the presence of mind. “I had to do that, also to make sure that what is happening here is real.” The photos show around a dozen people in jackets who hide their faces under hoods or behind scarves. “From the group I heard screams and shouts, I clearly understood the call ‘Jew swine is disappearing’,” says Dziuballa. “I called to my guests in the room: stay inside, this is no longer fun.”
Then he called the police, “the first time since 2008”. The officers were there after a few minutes. He and his two guests were interviewed while the police outside were collecting the projectiles: two fence pickets, five bottles, a dozen stones of all sizes and a steel pipe. The officers were very friendly and caring. “I’m still very grateful for that today.”
This evening contributed a lot to the fact that he had a “normal civil relationship” with the police again today, as he says. Before larger marches in the city, the responsible district manager comes to him and informs him about the situation. He also appreciates the new police chief very much. And yes, he feels safe in the city, even if he repeatedly experiences hatred of Jews and anti-Semitic abuse. “But I have more confidence in the police again, who take such incidents much more seriously today than they did a few years ago.”
But the attack in 2018 marked him. “What stuck with me, what I can’t get out of my head, are those hateful looks from the people who stood across from me in front of the restaurant. Where does this hatred come from? The stone that hit my shoulder could have hit my temple. Why do people in the middle of peacetime accept killing someone to express their political views? ”Therefore, whenever he leaves the house with his little niece or meets with people in town, he always puts on a hat. “Then you can’t see my kippah that I’m wearing.” His 80-year-old mother was told to wear the gold chain with the Star of David under her sweater when she left the house.
Two street corners away from the “Schalom”, in the middle of the Brühl pedestrian promenade, the city has put up steel letters, two meters high. They form the word “home”. Does Uwe Dziuballa, who was born in Chemnitz, feel at home in his city? The host takes his time with the answer. “Home is shaped by people, by your family, the social fabric around you, the contacts you have,” he says. “We are a kosher restaurant with a Michelin recommendation, which is even known in New York, and at the same time a local bar where neighbors from the surrounding houses stop for a glass of wine after work before they go home. In our safe are the keys to twelve apartments and four shops in the Kiez, which people have left here in case the door at home slams shut for them. “
Dziuballa is silent and looks thoughtfully around his restaurant. “But how can I, an old GDR citizen who has already experienced the collapse of a political system, be sure that today’s democracy will exist in Germany until the end of my life?” Sometimes he has doubts, and that’s because of what happened to him and is still happening to him. “I realized one thing,” he says. “When it comes to getting down to business, you shouldn’t stay too long. Before it is too late.”
