Germans First?
A Food Bank Bars Migrants, Setting Off a Storm
ESSEN,
Germany — Jörg Sartor does not like to turn newcomers away from his food bank,
especially single mothers like the young Syrian woman with her 5-year-old son
who had waited outside since before dawn.
But
rules are rules. And for the moment, it is Germans only.
“Come
here,” said Mr. Sartor, waving the boy over. Mr. Sartor disappeared into a
storage room and re-emerged with a wooden toy. Then the boy and his mother were
shown the door, which for the past two weeks has had five letters scrawled
across the outside: “Nazis.”
The
decision of one food bank in the western city of Essen to stop signing up more
foreigners after migrants gradually became the majority of its users has
prompted a storm of reaction in Essen, a former coal town in Germany’s rust
belt, and across the country. Even Chancellor Angela Merkel weighed in: “You
shouldn’t categorize people like this.”
But
the controversy has highlighted an uncomfortable reality: Three years after Germany welcomed more than a million refugees,
much of the burden of integrating the newcomers has fallen on the poorest,
whose neighborhoods have changed and who have to compete for subsidized
apartments, school places and, in the case of the food bank, a free meal.
Ask
any of the Germans lined up outside the former water tower that houses the food
bank one recent morning and they will call Mr. Sartor a “people’s hero.”
“He stands up for us,” said Peggy Lohse, 36, a single
mother of three.
Until
recently, groups of young migrant men had sometimes elbowed their way to the
front of the line, Ms. Lohse recalled. She went home empty-handed more than
once. Some older women were so intimidated that they stopped coming altogether,
she said.
“We have worked and paid taxes in this country; our
parents built it up,” said Marianne Rymann, 62, also in line. “How can it be
that we are turned away and those who just arrived get what they need?”
When some
1.2 million migrants arrived in Germany in 2015 and early 2016, they were
distributed across the country with the aim of sharing the cost and optimizing
the chances of integration. But many later left their designated homes,
gravitating to areas that already had a high concentration of migrants.
Essen, a
city of 600,000 people, has seen its Syrian community grow to nearly 11,000
from 1,300 in 2015, said Peter Renzel, who is in charge of social policy at
City Hall. Most of them live in the working-class districts of the north.
“It is a
challenge,” Mr. Renzel said. “Some districts carry a disproportionate burden.”
The image of
a line in which some wait their turn and others unfairly push to the front is a
familiar one for Karlheinz Endruschat, a local Social Democrat, who represents
the northern district of Altenessen.
Apartments
have become scarcer. Schools report that nine out of 10 of their students are non-German.
Some German residents feel alienated by the number of newcomers.
“There are
times when you walk down the street and you are in the minority,” Mr.
Endruschat said.
Mr. Endruschat is no fan of Mr. Sartor’s decision to
discriminate by passport. But he is even more critical of those who point a
finger from a position of privilege.
“Those who shout the loudest are the farthest from the
problem,” Mr. Endruschat said.
When Ms.
Merkel opened the border, she famously said, “We will manage.” Now, some towns
are saying they cannot.
Cottbus and
Freiberg in the former East Germany, and Delmenhorst and Salzgitter in the
former West, are among a number of cities that have taken steps to stop more
refugees from settling there, saying they are at or beyond capacity.
Several food
banks have sought to limit tensions by segregating immigrants and Germans by
time or day. Some have banned young men from signing up — in theory not to
target migrants, but in practice exactly that.
Sitting in
his crammed office in Essen one recent morning, arms defiantly crossed over his
substantial belly, Mr. Sartor scoffed. “They’re doing what I’m doing,” he said.
“They’re just not saying it.”
A former
coal worker who retired early when his mine shut down, Mr. Sartor has run the
food bank for 12 years as a volunteer.
He has deliberately left the Nazi graffiti on the door
and on the charity’s seven delivery vans, which have also been defaced. “It’s
absurd,” he said.
Until three
years ago, roughly one in three food bank users were foreigners, he said. By
last November, it was three in four.
Food bank users normally sign up for a year’s pass, after
demonstrating proof of need. It was Mr. Sartor’s idea to block any more non-Germans
from signing up, at least temporarily. The food bank continues to serve those
foreigners already on its lists.
When a message about the new policy went up on the
food bank’s website on Dec. 8, no one complained. It was only when the local
newspaper wrote about it last month that the decision suddenly exploded into
the national news.
Given the
controversy, representatives from the food bank, the city and migrant groups
met over the weekend and agreed that the ban would be lifted “as soon as
possible” — but only after the numbers of migrants and native Germans
evened out.
For now, the
share of foreigners among food bank users is still 60 percent, Mr. Sartor said.
One of his
120 fellow volunteers resigned in protest over the decision. But those handing
out bread, fish, vegetables and fruit on a recent afternoon said that something
had to be done.
One of them, Steffi Tamm, had just gotten off the
phone with an older woman who was inquiring whether it was “safe” to come back
to the food bank. “Have those young men gone?” she asked.
Some of the
threat, said Ms. Tamm, is more perceived than real. But she recalled how last
year, whenever she opened the door on distribution day, it was like being
caught in a scrum.
“They came
from both sides,” she said, pointing at the door. “I was practically overrun.”
A single
mother, Ms. Tamm, now 39, first came to the food bank as a user herself. That
was 10 years ago. She remembers lining up outside, on a busy street a stone’s
throw from the main station, in plain sight of everyone.
“There is
already an element of shame in standing out there,” she said. “The last thing
you need is having to fight for your place.”
It is a
question of “dignity,” she said.
It is for
others, too. The Syrian mother who was sent away one recent morning, Habib
Banavsch, said she hated having to line up for charity. “I would much rather be
home in my country,” she said quietly.
But war is still raging in her city of Afrin, and she is
alone looking after her son Yusef after his father left.
“We need help,” she said.
In addition
to language and cultural barriers, some here spoke of an attitude barrier
between vulnerable and often older Germans in need and young, often male,
migrants who had been through a lot. The migrants had made it this far not by
following rules but by rebelling against them.
“The
willingness and ability of these young refugees to take their own fate into
their hands feels threatening to people who have long given up on theirs,” said
Britta Altenkamp, a local member of the state Parliament. “And now we are
expecting these people to be the face of a tolerant and welcoming Germany.”
The
controversy has split the network of more than 930 food banks across the
country that, like the one in Essen, belong to a charity called the Tafel. The
charity has grown to 60,000 volunteers and serves 1.5 million people across
Germany. Many of them have experienced similar tensions.
Sabine
Werth, who now runs the Berlin subsidiary, founded the network in 1993, when a
wave of homelessness swept across her city. “One of our founding principles is
that we serve according to need, not origin,” said Ms. Werth, 61.
What Mr.
Sartor has done, she said, amounts to “Germany First.”
But Germany
First is popular with many, as Ms. Werth has learned the hard way in recent
days. “Cockroach,” “piece of dirt” and “foreigner’s slut” are some of the
insults that have landed in her inbox. One longtime donor diverted his donation
from Berlin to Essen, she said.
He is not
the only one. Mr. Sartor proudly showed off his donation account: Over the past
two weeks the food bank has received as much as it would normally raise in six
months. Some try to earmark their donation to Germans only, but Mr. Sartor does
not accept those.
His inbox is
mostly full of praise: “Keep going” one message read. “God bless you,” said
another. He has 2,340 unread emails.
The
nationwide head of the charity, Jochen Brühl, said the debate currently
animating the country was largely missing the point. Germany is Europe’s
richest country and has a budget surplus of more than 40 billion euros ($55
billion), he pointed out.
“The whole country is up in arms about this one little
food bank in Essen,” he said, “when the real scandal is that in this rich
country we have this kind of poverty.”
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