Jakob Springfeld

The author wrote this book in 2022 when he was twenty years old. He grew up in Zwickau, a city infamous for being the base of the three NSU (National Socialist Underground) terrorists who killed ten people between 2000 and 2006.
Springfeld writes about his growing activism as a teenager, how Zwickau became unsafe for him and his friends, why the situation there and in the whole state of Saxony is what it is and how it feels to be a young democratic activist in those surroundings.

I learned a show more lot from this book - about the history of rightwing extremism in Eastern Germany and how it is tied to the GDR, about the NSU murders and about the networks and strategies of rightwing extremists in Germany as a whole. Despite these heavy topics, the book is written in a style that is easy to understand and targeted towards a more youthful audience. Therefore, it was a quick read, although some of the contents were not easy to stomach. Towards the end, it became a bit rambling, but apart from that it is an excellent book. show less