It’s a sentence that made history. “We’ve done so much – we can do it!” said then-Chancellor Angela Merkel at the beginning of the “refugee crisis” in August 2015, referring to the reception of the refugees stuck in Hungary. The borders were thus open. In 2015, within a few months, hundreds of thousands of migrants came to Germany via the Balkan route, many of them to the Main-Spessart district.
The district was in a state of emergency. At the peak, up to 40 refugees had to be taken in every week. What to do with them? The people needed shelter, blankets, clothes and toys for the children. Emergency shelters were occupied and the refugees helped with dealings with the authorities.
The former brewery boarding school in Arnstein was converted into accommodation that offered the essentials. The district also rented the 52-room “Atlantis” hotel in Gemünden and created space for refugees. A communal shelter for up to 200 refugees was built in Marktheidenfeld.
According to estimates, there were almost 1,500 refugees who came to the district in 2015 and 2016. The majority from Syria, many from Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Iran and Belarus. That’s 1500 individual fates, many received permanent asylum, some left the district again – even against their will.
1. Narjes Hasoon and Samer Alsaka
The Alsaka/Hasoon family in Karlstadt are among the refugees from 2015. Samer Alsaka and his wife Narjes Hasoon came to Germany via the Balkan route in July 2015 with their five children. The family comes from Homs, where Alsaka ran several clothing stores with his father and brothers. Terror under Assad began shortly after there were demonstrations for freedom there in 2011.
The family initially fled the city, but witnessed bombings and gunshots up close. Daughter Lojen Alsaka, who is 16 today and is just about to complete secondary school, tells of a bombed mosque and many deaths. His beard got gray strands from sheer grief, says Samer Alsaka. In 2013, the family fled to Lebanon, but they were not welcome there. “We thought we’d come back,” says Lojen. After two years they fled to Turkey. They would have liked to stay there, but their father couldn’t find a job. Finally, the family decided to flee to Germany.
Why Germany? You would have heard so many positive things about it. “Mama Merkel,” says the 42-year-old. They had heard that refugees were treated well there, that it was a safe country with good educational opportunities for their children. Of course, they also heard from acquaintances that the language is difficult and that it is not always warm.
Daughter Lojen says they tried to get to Greece by boat from Turkey six times. Sometimes the police caught them, sometimes the engine failed in the middle of the sea, sometimes they were tricked. The sixth time, finally, the trip in a rubber dinghy with 60 other people on board worked.
In Europe, they came mainly on foot through several countries. The father says that the small children cried a lot and that the family often had to sleep on the side of the road or in the forest. In Hungary, the whole family was even imprisoned for a week. In Germany, they first stayed for two years in a place near Ansbach in Middle Franconia. Father and mother attended language and integration courses in Ansbach.
Because family members of mother Narjes were in Karlstadt, they moved here. At first they were dependent on money from the job center, which father Samer found very difficult, says his daughter. Then, in October 2018, he and a partner set up their own Syrian general store in a shop on the corner of Langgasse and Untere Viehmarktstraße, which previously had Turkish goods. In July 2022, the family, who now live in Mühlbach, even opened a second shop on the corner of Langgasse/Alte Bahnhofstrasse in the former Elektro Hofmann. But due to inflation, two shops were too expensive, now only the one on Alte Bahnhofstrasse still exists.
The always friendly and cheerful nature of her father is well received by the customers, says daughter Lojen. Even from Würzburg and Aschaffenburg, customers come regularly to shop. “Now this is my home,” says Samer Alsaka. They have settled in, the people in Karlstadt are friendly and helpful, the children go to school. Lojen would like to train as a pharmaceutical technical assistant.
There is no way back to Syria. Their belongings were confiscated and some of the shops were bombed out. Two of her uncles have been kidnapped and the family does not know where they are.
2. Hassan and Sabrina Hussain Khil
Hassan, 45, and Sabrina Hussain Khil, 41, from Afghanistan have lived in Germany since 2016 and in Karlstadt since 2018. The Pashtun and his Persian-born wife met in exile in Pakistan, where both families lived because of the ruling Taliban. When the Americans drove out the extremists, the young couple moved to Baglan in north-east Afghanistan in 2002. There they worked as teachers. Hassan also had a small printing shop. They had a good income and a house with a beautiful garden. Sabrina shows a video in which you can see her vine arbor.
But it was a life in constant danger. Sabrina had to wear a burqa all those years. From 2006 onwards, they say, the Taliban came over from Pakistan. “There was war every night,” says Hassan. At night there was fighting between the Taliban and the military in Baglan. Because of the gunshots and explosions, Sabrina turned on the TV in the middle of the night and turned it up loud so the frightened children wouldn’t have to hear the fighting.
Once Sabrina was hit by a motorcyclist while walking down the street with her little daughter in her arms. They report bomb attacks that damaged their home and business. When you left the house, you didn’t know if you would come home alive. Therefore, they saw no future for themselves and their children in Afghanistan and decided to flee.
Her dramatic, four-month flight to Germany took her through ten countries – mostly on foot, despite her four children. In January 2016, they crossed an ice-cold, chest-deep river between Iran and Turkey, Hassan repeatedly because of the children. He lost his shoes and couldn’t feel his legs anymore. After 20 minutes of walking, he found that his feet were completely bloody.
Wet and frozen, they were randomly stuffed into cars with others. There was a baby in a backpack in the car. The driver wanted to leave the motherless child behind, but Hassan and Sabrina took it. At a stop after two hours, the mother of the child happened to be there. “Otherwise I would have five children today,” says Sabrina.
We continued across the Balkans under indescribable conditions. The flight from Greece to Macedonia and on to Serbia only succeeded on the fifth occasion. In between, the family almost lost each other. They finally arrived in Passau on May 10, 2016. Exactly seven years later, they tell their story. After four and a half months in Schweinfurt, they came to Marktheidenfeld, where they had had no contact with Germans and were not allowed to take a German course. Two lost years for her. They should have been deported because there was no war in Afghanistan, but in the end they were allowed to stay.
Hassan worked as a temp at Lidl in Marktheidenfeld before the family moved to Karlstadt five years ago. Then they both did German courses. Hassan first worked at BayWa, then in a Turkish snack bar in Karlstadt, before setting up his own Afghan snack bar last year. But high inflation also brought the project to its knees again in the spring, and Hassan is now looking for work again.
Sabrina successfully completed an apprenticeship as a nanny (final grade 2.0), which was a feat due to her knowledge of German, and now works in the kindergarten in Wiesenfeld. Sometimes she still has nightmares about bombs and her children covered in blood. “When I see trees, I always have to think about escaping,” she says, because they often ran through forests.
Now they are satisfied, they feel safe here. “It’s important that I have a job,” says the 41-year-old. They are proud of their children. The 20-year-old son starts an apprenticeship as an IT specialist after passing his technical college diploma, and the eldest of three daughters would also like to do an apprenticeship soon.
3. Fahd Alhaj Khalifeh
Another good example of successful integration is Fahd Alhaj Khalifeh. He grew up in Latakia, a city on the Syrian Mediterranean coast that used to be quite modern. “But there was no freedom,” he says. He and his brother had made themselves suspect to the Assad regime because they had covered western songs with him as a keyboard player in a rock band. “I was in prison for three months because of it.” When he received his call-up order for the military in spring 2014, he decided to flee. He was 21 years old then.
His parents encouraged him to flee, he says. He set out on foot, the destination was Germany, because his father had business relationships there in the 1970s and 1980s. He didn’t walk all the way from Syria, he reports, he found rides within the countries but then made it across the green borders. “They picked me up in Hungary and I was in prison for a week.”
Finally, after three months, he reached Germany and applied for asylum there. Through the central admissions office in Zirndorf, he was allocated a bed in an inn in the Marktheidenfeld district of Zimmer. He is still grateful to the circle of helpers who supported the refugees there. “I couldn’t speak German,” he recalls. “First I made do with English.”
It was clear to him that learning the language is the key to integration. “I wanted to learn quickly,” he says, and took language courses. He also sought contact with Germans to try out the language. “I was happy to be corrected and my German kept getting better.” For him, the question of integration is a task for both sides, on the one hand the society that accepts you, and on the other hand you have to be open and want to integrate yourself.
Fahd Alhaj Khalifeh now speaks German very well. He has even had German citizenship for two years. After training as an electronics technician at Warema, he worked there in the IT department. You can also meet him as an employee in the clever-fit fitness studio in Marktheidenfeld.
Homesick for Syria, yes, he is, but Germany has become his second home. He has not met his parents for eleven years. “We talk on the phone often.” He would like to visit her, but in his opinion that will probably not be possible in Syria in the next few years. He’s observing developments there. “Assad is back in the saddle, if I enter Syria, I will be imprisoned.”
Reading tips: Missed the start of the series? The series parts that have been published so far can be found here on mainpost.de.
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