On the night of 5th June, the Autonomous Center (AZ) Kim Hubert in a small town of Salzwedel in Saxony-Anhalt has been attacked. At least ten hooded neo-Nazis had entered the AZ around midnight, started to pepper-spray people sleeping there, and destroyed furniture, windows and doors at the premises.  Several of the residents were injured, but luckily not seriously.

After the attack, the fash ignited a smoke bomb in the stairwell in order to secure their escape and made their way out. The attack seemed well-planned, and the neo-nazis did not say a single word while inside the building.

According to the press release from the Kim Hubert-based association Kultur und Courage, “This action is a new quality of right-wing violence in which neo-Nazis break into a building, attack people in their sleep and intentionally cause significant damage within five minutes.”

The activists believe that the raid was the response to the ‘anti-fascist city walk’ held on 16th May, during which they have drawn attention to the “massive right-wing violence in Salzwedel in recent years.”

According to German Indymedia, fascist attacks are not unusual in Salzwedel : anti-fascists are threatened, attacked and even followed to their homes. At the end of 2017, four neo-Nazis were found guilty before Stendal County Court of attacking a man they had mistaken for an anti-fascist and savagely beating him with baseball bats.

Considering the circumstances, the people who were in the house during the attack are doing well. However, the late night attack left them badly traumatized. “People were scared to death – suddenly, in the middle of the night, ten hooded men stood with baseball bats in our house.” They also report that the attackers “smashed everything they could get their hands on”. The exact scale of damage is yet unknown.

The Kim Hubert Autonomous Center has been the target of attacks in the past. In February 2010, a group of masked neo-nazis stormed an Antifa info night at the venue. Then in May 2011, two days before a nazi march in Salzwedel, AZ Kim Hubert was a subject of an arson attack. In January 2016, another arson attack occurred.