Berlin’s Youth Rally to Help Ukraine and its Refugees
By Lian Benasuly
BERLIN — On a bleak, deserted road in the middle of the night in early March, four vans headed from Berlin to the Poland-Ukraine border. In the vans were eight Berliners in their 20s who drove 24 hours straight to drop off an array of supplies at a refugee center there, and to bring dozens of refugees back with them into Germany.
One of the drivers, a German-Ukrainian Berliner named Georgiy Khokholyev, says his desire to help his native country trumped any fear he felt driving toward a war-stricken country.
“One night, my friend called me at 10 p.m. and said that he needed another person to drive a van to the border,” said Khokholyev, 24. “I still had my work clothes on and immediately left the house. We drove from Wednesday night until Thursday night and did the same drive a week later.”
In the weeks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many young Berliners felt helpless and confused as their instinctive desire to help refugees hit a stumbling block. The chaos caused by an influx of refugees made it difficult to find organized ways to volunteer.
“Basically the only thing you could do was watch the news or go to demonstrations,” Khokholyev said. “The day after the Feb. 24 Russian invasion, I went to protests to show my Ukrainian relatives and friends that I stand with them and that I’m not going to ignore what’s happening.”
Berliners have responded with open arms to the nearly 800,000 Ukrainian migrants who have arrived in the past five months, inviting them to stay in their homes. And, a war so close to home has unleashed an unprecedented response among younger generations in Germany, who haven’t seen military conflict so close since World War II.
Thousands of young people like Khokholyev have taken it upon themselves to help Ukrainian refugees living in Berlin and elsewhere. From demonstrations organized by volunteer groups to initiatives in schools, to donating money and goods, the youth of Berlin have mobilized to help in diverse ways.
Germany’s aggression in World War I and World War II and the Nazi Holocaust created a national conscience that compels many of all walks of life and ages to help refugees and victims of war. Right now that means Ukrainians, both here and those still residing in Ukraine.
“Intrinsic values of human rights are part of the German curriculum in schools,” said Izaak Martin, assistant cultural affairs officer in the U.S. Embassy in Berlin.
In the months since Russia invaded Ukraine, individuals residing in Germany have raised more than $800 million for Ukrainians, making this the highest sum of donations collected for a single disaster since the end of World War II, according to the German Central Institute for Social Issues.
Nearly 70% of German youth are concerned about a war in Europe, according to a survey conducted in April by Berlin’s Hertie School, a public policy college. A vast majority of those young people interviewed in the study could not comprehend why war is being waged in this day and age.
“There was this feeling in the beginning when people were stunned and overwhelmed. They were speechless and afraid,” said Marius Schlageter, 30, vice president of the German National Youth Council. “How can you overcome this feeling? The one thing you can do is get involved and take matters into your own hands.”
The German National Youth Council comprises 53 youth organizations and six million members, from young children all the way to young adults in their 30s. The youth council focused on three different approaches to helping Ukraine — receiving refugees, reaching out to Ukrainian youth organizations and supporting non-profit groups to handle the humanitarian crisis.
Through their youth organizations, German youth are showing solidarity with Ukraine. They are volunteering in refugee centers and educating themselves about the war. Several are also collaborating with Ukrainian youth organizations, says Schlageter.
Government agencies also saw an increase in volunteer efforts by youth in Berlin.
One is the State Office for Refugee Affairs. Hundreds of young Germans ages 18 to 30 mobilized via the messaging application Telegram to volunteer at the government agency for the first few weeks after the war escalated, according to public relations officer Sascha Langenbach.
“They were able to help with many tasks much quicker than we could,” Langenbach said. “In general, this desire to help and to volunteer among young people was very present in Berlin.”
Out of all the Ukrainian migrants who have sought refuge in Germany since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, 40% are children, according to the German Interior Ministry.
“It is important for young people to understand they can be part of these initiatives and volunteer efforts because many refugees are children,” said Aleksej Tikhonov, Russian co-founder of Ostraum, an Eastern European online cultural magazine.
And, German high schools are beginning to welcome an influx of teenage Ukrainian refugees.
One is Mildred-Harnack-Schule, a bilingual high school in Berlin for Russians and Germans, where faculty and students have collaborated on several projects to help Ukrainian refugees in Berlin.
In March and April, Russian history teacher Ivan Kulnev led an initiative to collect clothes, food and medicine for Ukrainians living in the war zone of Mykolaiv. And, in late May, the school organized a marathon to raise a few thousand dollars for Moabit Hilft , a nonprofit that is supporting Ukrainian refugees, according to a 16-year-old student at the school, Alexander Tikhonov.
Tikhonov’s parents are Russian and he has lived in Berlin his whole life, so taking part in initiatives through his school and in his personal life is a crucial part of his cultural identity.
“As a Russian myself, it feels like I have a collective responsibility to help the Ukrainian refugees,” he said.
The teen didn’t stop helping refugees after he participated in his school’s initiatives, but continued helping outside of class as well.
From translating city tours for refugees to going to the train station to pick up his Ukrainian relatives and help them with legal documents, he has continued to actively participate in local efforts.
Alongside the desire of many young Berliners to help refugees, comes an emotional toll. Volunteering and constantly thinking about the war can be taxing, Georgiy Khokholyev said.
After two 24-hour-long drives to the Polish-Ukraine border and back, Khokholyev felt exhausted — both physically and mentally.
“The refugees who came back with me to Berlin told me their stories. They went through hell. They had to wait in bunkers while bombs were dropped on their cities. It’s a lot to take in,” he said. “When I got home, the first thing I did was cry for two hours because it was too much to hear.”
The exhaustion felt by young Berliners goes beyond those participating in on-the-ground efforts.
“It is very easy to slide down a spiral of scrolling on social media,” said a 20-year-old university student and social media activist, who goes by the pseudonym “Kaciaberlin” for online privacy and security reasons.
“I get thousands of messages on Instagram every week and blatant hate messages are part of that,” she said.
A Belarusian German, Kaciaberlin has actively used her platform on Instagram, where she has nearly 4,000 followers, to speak about the state of the war and highlight organizations that her followers can learn from and volunteer for.
Half of her day goes towards reading and disseminating the news, she said.
“As young people, we have the opportunity to use social media and to make information easily accessible and digestible for people to understand the narratives of people affected by the war,” Kaciaberlin said.
She doesn’t stop at online activism — she went to protests organized by Vitsche, an association of young Ukrainians in Germany, to express her solidarity with the Ukrainian community.
By speaking up about the war in Ukraine from a Belarusian perspective, she believes that she can help make the voices of Ukrainians heard, Kaciaberlin said.
“The biggest fear Ukrainians have is invisibility and being forgotten,” she said. “It is important that Germans listen to Ukrainians themselves rather than German officials.”
The Ukrainian youth organization, Vitsche, aims to amplify the voices of Ukrainians.
Young Ukrainians living in Germany created Vitsche in January of 2022 because they felt an escalation in violence coming, said 24-year-old press coordinator Krista, who withheld her last name to protect her privacy.
Vitsche is made up of nearly 50 Ukrainians and Germans ages 20 to 30 who work full-time on a voluntary basis. As youth residing in Germany who have deep roots in Ukraine, they don’t think there can be dialogue about the war without Ukrainians present — which Krista says was a problem for them in late February and early March.
“There can be no discussion about Ukraine without Ukrainians.”
On Feb. 27, the Vitsche group was not invited to a half-million-person demonstration because of its staunch position demanding more weapons for Ukraine, according to Krista. And this wasn’t an isolated incident. Organizers of other protests and initiatives in Berlin left Vitsche out of several other events in February and March, according to a statement Vitsche made on Instagram.
Her group was not singled out for exclusion in a country with a strong post-World War II culture of pacifism, according to Krista. Other activists in Alliance4Ukraine, a collection of organizations supporting Ukrainians, were also left out.
“In the beginning, a lot of people were organizing events about Ukraine without us. That’s not the case anymore. We made a huge statement saying that it is not okay to organize Ukrainian protests and not give Ukrainians a voice. They understood,” she said.
Vitsche’s official statement on the matter, which gained a lot of traction on Instagram, bolstered support among youth for Ukraine’s demand for more military aid from Germany and other European countries. On Feb. 27, Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz gave a landmark speech to the German parliament announcing a “Zeitenwende” or “Turn of the Times,” when Scholz committed to step up its military pending and arms supply to Ukraine, a shift in Germany’s post-war policy of military restraint.
Now, Vitsche’s primary goals are to create a long-term Ukrainian cultural presence in Germany and continue giving the Ukrainian community in Germany a voice, Krista said.
Even the U.S. Embassy noticed strong engagement among German youth in its Zoom meetings with German youth advisory councils, said culture officer Izaak Martin.
Helping those in need is deeply embedded in German youth because of the profound appreciation Germans have for their own history, according to Martin, who visited several schools in Berlin and Brandenburg.
Nearly five months have passed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the volunteer efforts by youth in Berlin began. Some world leaders have warned about “Ukraine fatigue” among the public that that could make it hard to continue the momentum.
“As the war grinds on, it loses its potency,” Martin said.
Still, support for Ukraine among the fervent younger population in Germany remains strong.
“Many young people are still raising the issue and emphasizing the importance of supporting Ukraine,” said Marius Schlageter of the national youth council. “The question is if they can fight their own fatigue.”
The fight to maintain a strong consciousness about Ukraine in Germany is far from over, said Krista of the youth organization Vitsche.
“We know that attention spans are very short and in order to actually be sustainable in the long run for Ukraine, we need to continue building networks of solidarity,” she said. “We also know that as young Ukrainians and Germans, we can make real change.”
Lian Benasuly is a senior at UC Santa Barbara studying communication and pursuing a professional writing minor, with an emphasis in journalism.
