What German Citizens are Doing to Help Refugees
While the political discourse is polarizing and heated, many German citizens are taking matters into their own hands to alleviate the pressures society and refugees are feeling.
Recent news in the past four months about terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels hurt my heart, especially because I was living there last year. Of course this is because many innocent people have lost their lives, but a fair amount of my sadness comes from how acts by radicals individuals influences and shapes public opinion on a wider scale. The resulting rhetoric about Muslims and the refugee crisis is scary because it generalizes instead of pin points.
For over a year, anti-refugee sentiments have been growing. But recently, those sentiments along with anti-Muslim sentiments have been attached to terrorist attacks.
“Following the Paris attacks on Nov. 13, which claimed 130 lives, far-right parties pointed toward the violence as examples of threats posed to the European Union from migration into the continent. While many have raised security concerns over the hundreds of thousands of Syrians and migrants from elsewhere who have crossed into Europe in recent months, Muslim communities across Europe have come under growing scrutiny.”
Yet, just like with anything, we can’t associate one extreme with an entire group or movement, and things get tricky when politicians contribute to that rhetoric. The sexual assaults in Cologne earlier this year drew an even new wave of anti-refugee backlash as some of the perpetrators were discovered to have been refugees. It’s important to note that not all of them were refugees though.
Germany has been at the forefront of refugee political discourse since last year when Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke out the loudest towards inclusion. She walks a perilous line between human rights and national security as we’ve seen with far-right movements calling out against her actions and the legitimate fear of extremists slipping through the cracks of migrant displacement.
Yet, I don’t want to spend the majority of this post debating the political issues of the crisis. God knows there is enough chatter and news out there to suck you in if you wish to learn more. Instead I want to focus on what citizens are doing with the latest waves of displaced refugees pouring into Europe, specifically Germany. I decided to focus on Germany because they have been at the focal point of the crisis. As the main political voice in the debate about what to do with the influx of bodies, I wanted to see what the community was doing outside of the political sphere.
While reporting last year in Brussels, I became interested in this topic and began researching what was being done for the refugees. I came upon a website called Refugees Welcome, which allows citizens to register their flat online and works as a “match-making” site to pair them with refugees, giving them a place to stay. The website originated in Germany but has since spread to multiple countries in Europe and to Canada.
There are other such social programs established in Germany that are helping to alleviate the strain of resources. The Evangelisches Jugend- und Fürsorgewerk (EJF) also runs a program that places refugees in private homes. Deutsche Kleiderstiftung (Clothing Foundation) gives Refugees Emancipation e.V. in Potsdam laptops, monitors, computers and tablets through accepted donations. They also organize computer courses for people in need. Give Something Back to Berlin is an English-language charity directed at helping expats volunteer to teach refugees German.
One of my favorite organizations that I discovered through my research was one I found through Facebook. It’s called Bicycles in Berlin, and through their over-arching organization, “The Syrian House in Germany”, the FB group organizes biking trips for Syrian refugees, helping them acclimate to life in a new country while meeting fellow countrymen.
It’s too easy to get bogged down by the tension and barbs thrown around in the political debate about the refugee issue, and this post is by no means my attempt to say how any country should approach the situation — because it is a complex issue, one that has to masterfully navigate human rights concerns while taking into consideration national security. But rather, I wanted to focus on what people are making of the situation, what the average person has done and can do in Germany to help those already in their country.
And as these examples show, at least some percentage of Germany citizens are forgoing political debates and instead running with the situation so to speak. Human rights are a complex issue, especially in terms of immigration. Yet, these few examples show that one shouldn’t just look into the political conversation but rather dig deeper into what society feels — the good and the bad and to not get swept up in the anti-refugee sentiment that is growing.
