The Left | Oranienburg: Left party office raided

The left won't let the right dictate what happens in their offices. Photo: dpa/Andreas Arnold It is the second incident within two weeks and overall the third attack in a short time, said district council member Enrico Geißler (Left) to the “nd” on Monday. As the police reported on the same day and Geißler confirmed, an unknown person broke into the Left's district headquarters in Oranienburg (Oberhavel) on Sunday afternoon and provoked people there. Four members of the Left Youth were sitting together and asked the stranger to leave the rooms in vain.

There was a verbal argument and a scuffle, whereupon the perpetrator used pepper spray, the North Police Department reported. The unknown man then fled on foot with companions who were waiting for him outside the door. Two people aged 20 and 32 who were injured by pepper spray received medical care in the ambulance and in the hospital respectively. Officers searched for the suspect near the office without success. The criminal police have now taken over the investigation, according to the police department.

District council member Geißler complains that passers-by are regularly harassed in front of the office. Many older comrades were reminded of the 1990s, when neo-Nazis roamed the streets with baseball bats. Geißler announces that the office will remain open to left-wing youth and citizens seeking advice and help. "We won't allow ourselves to be intimidated by such gangs."

"In our city, we resolve conflicts with words - not with gas."

“The attack on the Left office on Bernauer Strasse shocked me,” reacts Mayor Jennifer Collin-Feeder (SPD). She wishes the injured young people a speedy recovery and hopes that the police can catch the perpetrator. “Anyone who attacks people in their own spaces is not just attacking a party – they are attacking the democratic coexistence of our city,” explains Collin-Feeder. »Violence against politically active people, regardless of party, has no place in Oranienburg. In our city we resolve conflicts with words – not with irritant gas.«

“This violence must be stopped with all vigor,” says Left Party state chairwoman Katharina Slanina. Her deputy Marek Lipp calls on Brandenburg's Interior Minister Jan Redmann (CDU) to "present an action plan against extreme right-wing violence in order to take action against this worrying development." According to Lipp, the attackers belong to the right-wing spectrum.

The office of the Oranienburg Left on Bernauer Strasse is only one and a half kilometers away from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial, which is also having increasing problems with right-wing extremists.

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