The New Arrivals, the Old Hatred, and the People Between Them
Germany in the summer of 2015: tens of thousands of people arriving from Syria, Nigeria, Serbia, Afghanistan—moving through a continent still arguing about whether to let them in. Families sleeping outside processing centers because the system was overwhelmed. Syrian children separated from parents who might never make it. Women who had fled poverty in Serbia ending up in Saxony, which was offering them something considerably worse than what they’d left behind.
Saxony that August was its own particular horror. Riots in Heidenau. Arson attacks on refugee housing. People beaten in the streets. The political debate happening in parallel—about quotas and integration and cultural identity—had almost nothing to do with the actual situation, which was that human beings were sleeping in the rain and some of their neighbors had decided the appropriate response was a lit match.
The useful responses weren’t complicated. If you spoke multiple languages, you could volunteer as a translator at intake centers. If you had a spare room, organizations existed to match you with someone who needed one. Donated clothes, shoes, food. Teaching German. Or just talking to the person who moved in down the street—showing them where things were, letting them know someone was paying attention in a way that wasn’t hostile. The barrier to being useful was genuinely low.
Some people had already cleared it. A fashion blogger in Dresden named Matthias organized "Fashion für Flüchtlinge," a clothes drive that collected an actual useful quantity of things. Madeleine in Vienna was physically at the Traiskirchen camp—one of the most overcrowded refugee facilities in Europe that summer—just showing up and helping. Lisa in Cologne invited her new neighbors to her garden to meet each other. These gestures were small and they were not small.
Financially: the UNHCR needed money and would use it well. The Red Cross needed money and would use it well. The cost of contributing was a few minutes and a card number. The cost of not contributing was, I suppose, being able to sleep fine about it.
And then there was the other thing. The night fires. The mobs. People who had already survived war and displacement arriving somewhere that was supposed to be different and finding more violence waiting. I don’t have a measured formulation for this. Setting fire to a refugee housing block at night is not a political opinion. Beating someone on the street because of where they came from is not a form of civic engagement. The people doing these things were operating under a delusion about what country they thought they were defending, and someone should have explained to them—clearly, if necessary loudly—that this was not it.
Europe was going to change regardless of what any single person wanted. The question was only what role you were playing in that change. The roles available were not ambiguous, and some people chose badly.