Katja Heinemann

DOCUMENTARY WORK: – generation exile

  • “It’s too difficult, our journey. We risk our life, but we have to do it, if we are looking for a future. If you’re looking for something good, you have to try hard for that to achieve.” Seventeen-year-old Jawad (at right) came to Berlin from Afghanistan in the spring of 2015 with his mother and 15-y.o. sister, arriving just before the summer’s uptick in the numbers of refugees seeking a safe haven in Germany. Omid, 22, a childhood friend, arrived three month later by himself, his family dispersed throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan by their country's decades-long war.
  • “In Germany, we’re not the only foreign people living here. It’s different kind of people, from anywhere, Syria, Iraq… We actually feel like we are not from anywhere else, we’re also from Deutschland, we are living here, we go to school. We are all learning together. Learn their language, learn their culture, enjoy with them together.”Jawad attends one of the 500 and counting Willkommensklassen (welcome classes) of intensive German language lessons for young refugees in Berlin. Back home, he had finished tenth grade before having to interrupt his schooling, and he is hoping that once he speaks German as well as he already speaks English, he’ll be able to transfer to a regular class, or maybe start an Ausbildung – attend the German vocational training program for young people.
  • Herr Conze, a data processing/IT instructor, teaches German as a foreign language to the students of Jawad’s Willkommensklasse at a vocational school. Jawad: {quote}We are really happy with our school, our teachers. For now, our whole focus is to learn Deutsch. It’s the most important thing! We’re trying our best, trying so hard.”Welcome classes were initially established in Berlin in the 2011/2012 school year, and their numbers have surged with the influx of new refugees over the summer and fall of 2015, to over 500 classes serving almost 6,000 children and youths by October, 2015.
  • Jawad feels immensely grateful for the warm welcome Germany has shown his family. “What happens next, I don’t know, I hope it is getting better, and better. The most important thing for us is that we really feel safe here. Actually, everyone wants to live in THEIR country, with their people, their cultures. We all want to live together with our families, relatives, friends. We hope our country will get better one day… that one day our people will live in a peaceful country, in a peaceful land.”
  • {quote}This is the only question that I really want to know. Will they keep us, or send us back to where we came from?{quote} Jawad watches TV in the single room he shares with his mother and younger sister, and the reports of seemingly endless crowds of people making their way to Europe is beginning to frighten him: “We expect a lot from Deutschland and up to now we really saw that. We’re happy for Deutschland to give us such a good opportunity to make a good future for us. And we hope that it will continue for other people also. As you know, these days, lots of people are coming. We still hope that they give us the opportunity to continue our life like this. To stay here forever….”
  • Jawad and Omid are part of Champions Ohne Grenzen, a soccer initiative and mentoring program for young refugees.“They are really cool guys, they always help us.” Jawad is having a great time, but even in the most lighthearted of moments, recent experiences are a constant frame of reference. After an especially difficult wall, his hands feel raw and won’t stop trembling: “Ouch!! This hurts!! I think if they want to fingerprint us now, there won’t be any lines left for them to record...” There's an added irony inherent in this group outing to an indoor bouldering club in Kreuzberg – the last time the two young Afghans went hiking and bouldering, through actual mountains, they had Iranian border guards shoot at them.
  • Signs at LAGeSo, Berlin's Landesamt für Gesundheit und Soziales, point to separate lines for people in different stages of the asylum process.The Office of Health and Social Affairs in Berlin’s Moabit neighborhood became a very public symbol of bureaucratic inaction and inefficiency, as growing lines and ensuing chaos during the summer and fall of 2015 signaled that the city government was not in charge of the situation any longer. Urgent needs of food, clothing, and shelter were mostly met by a not-for-profit neighborhood association, Moabit Hilft – another very public symbol of the extent to which German civil society rose to the occasion and picked up the slack where government institutions were slow to mobilize.
  • Abdullah, a 17-year-old Palestinian youth, grew up in Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, which saw heavy fighting during the Syrian civil war. He came to Berlin with his 18 y.o. sister in the summer of 2015, a time when the LAGeSo processing center had become unable to cope with the increasing numbers of newly arriving refugees. A week into the wait for his number to come up, which in the end would take 45 days, Abdullah encountered Moabit Hilft, a local community organization that has been instrumental in providing shelter, clothing and medical care to people stranded at LAGeSo. Ever since, House R, the organization’s bustling headquarters, has served as his Berlin focal point. “I was thinking that these are nice people. Others don’t do the type of things they are doing.” He is volunteering with the group daily, and is making friends among the Berlin old timers, but also the many young refugees (50% of all volunteers by one estimate) who have become a crucial part of keeping Moabit Hilft running. At the same time, Abdullah’s cheerfulness masks his growing frustration at being stuck in limbo: his Termin (appointment) to officially register as a refugee isn’t scheduled until mid-January, and he won’t be able to attend school before receiving his papers.
  • “You have got to be tough to make it.” – Dagmar, Abdul’s social workerA few days before his 18th birthday, Abdul is moving out of the group housing for refugee youths where he has spent the past months, an institution that has acquired a reputation for neglect and carelessness. The young Afghan is moving into his own apartment under a supervised living arrangement run by AWO social services provider. First in this new Berlin chapter, after unceremoniously handing over the keys to the group shelter: a stop at Ikea to pick out some furniture and kitchen items. These basics for independent living are provided as a standard part of an asylum seeker’s initial move from group residences to their own apartment. Extremely self-motivated, Abdul has enrolled himself in school and has advocated for more advanced placements, while also finding extracurricular language courses he pays for out of pocket. He hopes to go on to study political science one day.
  • A 2012 cell phone photo shows Abdul in Afghanistan, beaten and wounded by the Taliban after he refused to work with them; it is part of a collection of documents and images he hopes to present in his eventual asylum hearing. The exact process of next steps remains vague to him – navigating an unfamiliar, complex legal system, across language barriers,leaves him worried. Every step is fraught with anxiety and fear that a mistake might result in being sent back to a war zone.Abdul had to initially flee his native Herat Province in 2010, seeking shelter in a different province after his father was killed by a bomb as he was leaving mosque after Friday prayers. To this day, Abdul is unsure whether local government power brokers or the Taliban murdered his father. “They destroyed my house, cut down the garden,” he recalls. “They burned my brother’s hand. I can’t go back. They’ll kill me.”
  • Abdul has to promise Ingeborg that, yes, he will eat his Muesli in the mornings, and no longer go to school on an empty stomach. As his eighteenth birthday drew close, it remained unclear whether Abdul would be granted a discretionary extension of youth protection. Things are working themselves out it seems, and not only was he approved for the additional aid, but he also met Ingeborg and her husband Woody. Ingeborg serves as a pro bono legal guardian for Abdul’s former roommate, and the couple decided to informally look after Abdul as well, mentoring him and assisting him with the myriad tasks and questions involved in beginning a new life in Germany.
  • Fahim explores Gleisdreieck Park with his legal guardian Susanne during a fall bicycle outing. The 16-year-old had come to Berlin by himself in the summer of 2014, after growing up in a refugee family that has been dispersed across Iran and Afghanistan by his country’s decades-long war. Slowly, through a series of weekly outings and activities, Susanne and Fahim have begun to form a personal connection. “I have learned a lot,” Susanne reflects, “not only about Germany’s asylum laws and bureaucracy, but also more generally, including the realization of how far removed one is in Berlin from the daily realities the refugees are facing.” She was introduced to Fahim through Akinda, a not-for-profit organization that trains Berliners to serve as pro bono legal guardians for unaccompanied minor refugees. While the youths remain in supportive housing placements, their guardian will serve as both mentor and advocate until their 18th birthday and possibly beyond.
  • Fahim meets with his legal guardian, Susanne, every couple of weeks. The two enjoy the outdoors, exploring the city by bike, or playing table tennis in the park. Being active is important to Fahim, who is athletic and recently signed up for parkour classes; he is also learning to skateboard. Getting to know each other across the language barrier is an ongoing process, and Susanne recalls that her group of volunteers, who were trained over a series of workshops, was cautioned repeatedly that it might take patience for a relationship to build. For the first few months, just establishing a regular presence in the life of someone who has experienced loss after loss is crucial, as is creating a space for playfulness and feeling carefree. Still, in hindsight Susanne feels that her expectations were a bit naive: “I expected more communication, initially, but am learning that over time, we are both opening up and sharing more. Last month, Fahim for the very first time mentioned one of the experiences he had when fleeing to Germany.”
  • “Of course it’s very difficult, with another language.” Aseel is 17, going on 18, and after an initial year of learning German in a Willkommensklasse for refugee youths, she is now enrolled in a regular 9th grade. Being much older than her classmates is not the only challenge the Palestinian girl faces: “I love math, but when the teacher asks a question, even when I know the answer, I can’t really say it. Sometimes, when I say a sentence not quite right, people laugh at me.” Back in Syria, where she grew in Yarmouk refugee camp, Aseel had been enrolled in 11th grade. Without the war she’d be starting her university studies by now. “But the teacher is really nice! Now one year of ninth grade, and then a diploma, and then vocational training: medical assistant!”
  • Aseel shows off a pendant in the colors of the Palestinian flag in her family’s new living room in a southern Berlin suburb. She dreams of a Palestinian homeland to return to, but pragmatically thinks that strife in the Middle East might continue for many years, so maybe becoming a nurse would be useful. But maybe she wants to become a TV announcer instead, like the one on her favorite Palestinian station. For now, there’ll be an internship as part of her spring semester, and she started volunteering at UNICEF.
  • Aseel tidies her bedroom. Since June, aft, er months of separation and a year spent in refugee housingher family has been reunited in their own apartment on the southern outskirts of Berlin . They painstakingly renovated their new home – Aseel picked out wallpaper decorations and bought the furniture on eBay: “I’m learning online, as well, because I want to learn how to speak German more quickly.” Life in Berlin felt lonely at first, when the only connection to her girlfriends left back home was through WhatsApp. But things are changing as family and friends from Syria have been able to join them in Berlin. “Now my best friend has come from Syria, through Turkey, Greece… She’s been here for two weeks now, so nice. Now I’m happy. My very best girl friend!{quote}
  • Aseel’s mother left Syria first, together with two of Aseel's brothers, to bring the eldest to safety before he would be conscripted into the war. The family had been displaced within Syria for more than two years, and had temporarily sought safety in Lebanon, before trying to return home one last time. It would be many months before they’d finally reunite in Berlin. “I stayed in Syria with my father and one brother, it was so difficult, and so sad, because we love my mother and my brothers, we missed them so much. Always, always, skype, every day. My little brother, when he came from school, first thing he’d go, ‘where is my mom, what did she do today, what did she cook?’ Lots of sadness, and lots of tears. But now in Berlin we are a little bit happy again, because there is no war, and no problems. And we have a residence permit: For three years.”
  • A small rally attended by leftist parties, anti-racist youths and Turkish-German unionists outside of the Reichstag parliament building denounces the newly restrictive “Asylbeschleunigungsgesetz” (Asylum Acceleration Law) that was passed that day. Taking effect on November 1st, 2015, the law calls for increasing the mandatory length of a refugee’s stay in an initial intake center to 6 months, while lengthening the work ban period and making access to higher education and job training more restrictive for young refugees who are granted a temporary stay of deportation, or Duldung – developments that will make integration a more difficult and lengthy process for new arrivals. The dedication Dem deutschen Volke – To the German People – is inscribed on the Reichtag’s frieze, and many of the fears and trepidation expressed by Germans who hope to clamp down on the flow of refugees to the country are going beyond economic concerns to touch on a longstanding debate over whether Germany is becoming a country that welcomes immigration and diversity.
  • By October, as the weather turned and temperatures dropped, the situation at Berlin’s Office of Health and Social Affairs (LAGeSo) became increasingly desperate. People trying to register waited in pouring rain day in and day out, with no shelter provided. By the end of October, a new asylum processing office was inaugurated, and warming tents were erected as holding units to gather newly arriving refugees before transporting them to emergency shelters; however, there was no contingency plan for what to do about the backlog of several thousand people who were still in line under the old system and who continued to wait exposed to the elements.
  • Adel (left) is trying to register his younger cousin Younis, 15, by using the address of the Berlin hotel where they have found shelter. The Yazidi boy had finished sixth grade in Iraq before he had to flee the war, and hopes to re-enroll in school. Younis and Adel are joining a large community of Yazidis who are seeking refuge in Germany, a high percentage of whom are being granted asylum as a persecuted minority. But there are complications: Adel had been fingerprinted in the Czech Republic when entering the EU, Younis was not. Their lawyer is arguing that separating them by sending Adel to the Czech Republic under Dublin III regulations would constitute a hardship for the teen, but since he has been placed under his relative’s custody, he no longer enjoys special protections as an unaccompanied minor refugee.
  • Fifteen-year-old Younis arrived in Berlin in April with his older cousin, Adel, 27, whom he calls uncle. Their family was displaced by the August, 2014 Islamic State massacre of the Kurdish Yazidi ethnic and religious minority in the Sinjar area of Northern Iraq; their relatives are living in UNHCR refugee camps. Adel: “Younis has two sisters and two brothers. His father is very poor, he has nothing, so he asked me, ‘Can you take the boy with you? And maybe he’ll be able to bring us to Germany one day.’ Our family lives in Iraq, there are thousands of children like him, who have no food, no water, no clothes, and now it’s beginning to get cold there.”Even Berlin does not feel altogether safe: “We made it all this way, and they are still following us.” Stories of threats and persecution of Yazidis by Arab Muslims in Germany’s refugees shelters are circulating. The pair found refuge in a hotel that is Yazidi-owned and doesn’t allow Arabs or Muslims – except people from Pakistan, since there are no issues between their communities.
  • “In school, when they ask me if I live in an apartment or in a refugee shelter, I’m ashamed to admit that I live in refugee housing.” Summaya stays in a Wohnheim in a northern part of Berlin. The Chechen teenager’s family is unable to find regular housing under a short term six months Duldung, a temporary suspension of deportation, and their cramped and impermanent living arrangements are a source of ongoing stress and frustration .“My brother tells me we used to live like normal people, before the war in Chechnya. I don’t know about that time, I was born during the war – in a cellar, because of the curfew. I don’t know what things were like before, but my parents tell us stories. We used to live in a nice place, we were well off, so to speak, and after the war everything got worse.” This is the family's sixth residence in less than three years in Berlin. What if they were to lose their place in the current Wohnheim? “Maybe we wouldn’t be able to find another shelter. I mean, it feels like we’ve already been everywhere.”
  • Summaya (not her real name) has lived in Berlin since January of 2013. The teenager just turned 16; she shares a room in an asylum seeker center with her mother and three brothers, aged 19, 6 years and 9 months old. It’s cramped quarters, and the toddler cries at night. An older brother, 20, is married and lives with his wife and newborn baby. Summaya’s family fled Chechnya after the war, when continuing political tensions made staying impossible. Berlin or even Germany wasn’t their destination – getting out and to safety was the only goal. The trauma of the war followed them to Berlin, and the family ruptured. Summaya believes that her father has returned to Chechnya. If they were to be repatriated, her parents’ separation would result in the children being taken from their mother according to local laws, and the family would arrange an early marriage for Summaya, not allowing her to finish high school or pursue her plans of becoming a nurse or pharmacist. Her mother’s assessment of the treatment that would await her and her daughter back home is matter of fact: “In Germany I feel like a human being – in Chechnya, I am considered a doormat.”
  • “I hope I’ll be able to stay here. To live here. I’m afraid, of those things we had to go through repeating themselves.” Summaya's family is among the estimated 140,000 asylum seekers whose petitions for refugee status were denied, but who are allowed to remain in Germany under a temporary suspension of deportation, or Duldung, held in this photo by her mother. {quote}They wanted to deport us. Every month we had to report in, and they gave us this large white paper. It went on like that for a year and a half. And now we’re good for 6 months! We’re still afraid, but not like before.”In school no one knows about her worries: “I don’t talk about stuff like that. They wouldn’t understand. All those problems with our papers, I was thinking about being deported instead of thinking about school. And at night I couldn’t sleep, I was so afraid: 'Now they’re coming, now they’re gonna come!’ I was falling asleep in school.”
  • In Berlin, where many Muslim girls wear pants, the combination of headscarf and a modest, long skirt that Summaya has been wearing since age 13 stands out. Her history teacher told her that she'd never be able to find an Ausbildungsstelle, a place in a vocational training program, wearing the hijab. “It’s a scary thought. But if someone from a different country came to my country, wearing pants, I would also think, ‘hey, why is she dressing like this?’ And that’s why I understand the Germans. But I can’t take the scarf off any longer, I’d feel too ashamed. Around boys. Women are allowed to see me.” The headscarf serves as a symbolic reminder of being different, of standing out, of feeling foreign. Especially in the beginning, when she understood only a few words of German, Summaya felt a constant insecurity: “What are they saying about me?” There were times when she felt threatened. But things are slowly getting better, especially after she moved to a different part of town and switched schools. “They understand me when I am saying something. And we’re having fun. Before, whenever I didn’t know how to do something, I just let it go. Now I want to show that I can do stuff. I participate, I try new things. Because I want to live here. Not look German, but learn like a German.”
  • Seventeen-year-old Jawad came to Berlin in the spring of 2015 with his mother and 15-y.o. sister, and the family’s first big hurdle in the process of applying for asylum has been cleared: their Dublin III case’s statute of limitations has expired after six months. Twenty-two-year-old Omid, Jawad’s friend from childhood (at right) arrived three months later, and is still waiting to see whether his asylum claims might have to be processed in Hungary.
  • “I come in this world, I saw the war. Too much suicide bombers, this much Taliban, every day dying, dying, dying.” Omid had to flee his home in Afghanistan’s Baghlan Province when he was only six years old, after his father was killed by the Taliban, and he has memories of the nights spent in the mountains when his grandfather took the family over the border into Pakistan for safety. To this day, his family is dispersed throughout Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. At 22, Omid is part of an exodus of young people fleeing the region, a generation that grew up during Afghanistan’s post-Soviet upheavals: the civil war and Taliban rule of the 1990s, the American intervention, and now a resurgence of not just the Taliban, but ISIS is also establishing a presence in the Eastern part of the country. At the same time, Pakistan is pushing out its still sizable Afghan refugee population, and attacks on members of the Hazara minority are on the rise in both countries.
  • Omid and a friend meet up with a group of young Afghans at Alexanderplatz. Official figures have tracked an estimated backlog of more than 1,500 unaccompanied minors who are temporarily placed in hostels and other emergency housing throughout Berlin, mixed in with an adult refugee population and with limited youth services or supervision available. Insiders working with the Berlin Senate’s youth agency report that future intake appointments to be officially registered by the youth welfare services have now stretched into the end of the 2016 calendar year. Data compiled by Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees show that between 2009 and 2013, the number of unaccompanied minors from Afghanistan by far surpassed those from other source countries. In 2014, as well, the largest group of unaccompanied minors claiming asylum in European countries hailed from Afghanistan, at 6,155 refugee youths under age 18 out of a total of 24,000.
  • Omid is leaving a housing information session organized by EJF Evangelisches Jugend und Fürsorgewerk, armed with new paperwork to complete. Upon arriving in Germany, the first few months of a refugee’s time and daily routine will be taken up by dealing with the logistics of settling into the status of an asylum seeker. There are appointments – Termine. And doctors’ visits, and more Termine: consultations, and forms to sign, and interviews, and the distribution of temporary documents in an indecipherable language. There are language courses. There will be a move from the initial intake center or emergency shelter to somewhat less temporary housing. Omid has a more permanent place to sleep now, a shared room in a Wohnheim, and has just been issued a housing permit and allowance that will enable him to look for an apartment or a place in one of Berlin’s ubiquitous apartment shares – Wohngemeinschaften, for short WGs.
  • “Everyone here is scared about their relatives back home. So we are here, happy, but we are also thinking about our families. And also praying, hoping that one day the condition of Afghanistan get good.”Once the initial euphoria of having arrived in safety wears off, and the frantic pace of the first weeks in Germany slows down, there is time to reflect – and to worry. Days are marked by waiting for the mail to arrive, bringing news about the asylum process. The living in limbo, waiting for the next Termin and the eventual asylum decision, will weigh on anyone; the feeling of loneliness and isolation can be especially trying for those young people who have come to Germany by themselves after having spent their childhoods and youths as part of tightly-knit extended families. “At home we live with five, six people in one room, we eat together, it’s really different. I am alone here, thinking about them.{quote}
  • Omid and Nicole, his Tandem language partner, are trying to figure out some of the more absurdly bureaucratic portions of his housing application paperwork in a Neukoelln bar. A key factor in successfully navigating the first months in Germany is the ability to reach out and seek friends and mentors. Or, in Omid’s words: “No time for shy.” Through an online registry run by KuB (Kontakt- und Beratungsstelle für außereuropäische Flüchtlinge e.V.), he met Nicole, age 31, a young professional who relocated to Berlin last year. After a summer and fall of volunteering and advocating for refugee causes, Nicole has just started a new job, and a Tandem partnership is a way to still remain involved, but on a more personal scale and on equal footing. Meeting with Omid is an exchange, not a social service: two people learn each other’s language – in this case, Omid teaches Nicole Urdu, and she helps him with his German. Of course, right now, there are also specific things that Nicole will help Omid with, such as opening a bank account, or looking for an apartment – a daunting task for anyone moving to Germany’s capital. But in the long term the dynamic should even out again, and Nicole hopes that once he is settled in, Omid will in turn extend a hand to others.
  • “We come here to make a good life, or a good future. Because in Afghanistan, everyday blasting, no one knows when he or they or she will die. Any minute, any second, we might die, we never know which day will be our last. We know we could die in borders, or crossing the sea from Turkey to Greece. We said: ‘No problem. Germany or die.’ Finally, we arrived. Here, you can walk the streets safely. Boy or girl. We can be happy. Here, people respect each other. We like this life. Life is not just: do your job, life means: give respect, take respect. Here, they know the humanity.”October 2015
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