One Month in Clausnitz: A Visit to Ground Zero of Refugee Anxiety

The train to Clausnitz drives between rapeseed fields, past fish ponds and over pavement lonesome with pollen from a surrounding debonair trees. On a outing from Dresden, a train reaches a straight, descending highway heading to a hilltop, after that a highway descends steeply. Those pushing a highway could be forgiven for meditative a universe ends after this knoll.

Clausnitz lies in a hollow below; a perfumed smell of apple blossoms hangs in a air.

On Feb 18, a train carrying 20 refugees followed this track to Clausnitz. The passengers were to pierce into apartments in 3 opposite buildings in town.

When a train rolled in, Michael Funke, a mayor of Clausnitz, was sitting down for an dusk meal. Later that evening, he schooled that residents of Clausnitz had collected and unfurled sheets daubed with slogans. One read: “Resistance”.

Thomas Hetze, a hostel director, was watchful in his bureau in one of a 3 buildings for a refugees to finally arrive. At a time, frequency anyone was meddlesome in a fact that he is a member of a worried populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), a celebration with an anti-refugee summary that has been gaining belligerent recently in polls and elections. Later, he would hear internal residents shout, “We are a people!” a tenure used in protests opposite a East German regime in a run-up to a tumble of a Berlin Wall.

In a encampment below, Ronny was usually opening a bottle of Radeberger drink when a content summary arrived on his mobile phone. “It’s starting.” Oh my god, Ronny suspicion to himself before pushing adult a mountain to a top village. Later, he watched as a military officer pulled a interloper out of a train regulating a chokehold.

That evening, a lady in a blue compress blocked a train usually a few meters from a accommodations. A few Clausnitz residents unfurled a piece on a tractor with a difference “Our Country, Our Religion, Home, Freedom, Tradition” scrawled opposite it. The military news settled that 100 Germans stood around a train and a refugees refused to get off. Someone filmed a ordeal, and a video wound adult on a Internet, ensuring prominence for Clausnitz. The video became mystic of what some people in Germany consider of a refugees and how they provide them.

But memories also sojourn of a word Reisegenuss, or “pleasant journey” on a digital pointer in a windshield of a train in that these passengers were roving — passengers whose fear could be seen on their faces. The train association was called Reisegenuss — though a picture became emblematic of cynicism.

Memories further sojourn of a impulse in that a German military officer grabbed a immature interloper by a neck and forced him to leave a bus.

And memories sojourn of usually how shrill and assertive a group were as they shouted, “We are a people!”

A Month in Clausnitz

Was it hatred? Is Clausnitz a Nazi village? Is a conditions some-more formidable than that? And if yes, how? What kind of people live in this partial of Germany, in a Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) segment of a eastern state of Saxony? How do they see things? What gathering them to retard a train carrying refugees?

On a hunt for answers to such questins, we spent a month vital in Clausnitz. we rented a guest room on a plantation for 8 euros a night.

One of a initial encampment residents to pronounce with me was a refugee. Sitting on a dais in front of his home, he told me his story. He comes from a place full of forests and lakes, he said. Before a war, his father had worked during a paper factory, though he afterwards went to a front and died there.

His mom fled with her son – creation tools of a tour on feet and others in a horsecart. His mom delicately recorded a paper cornet as they fled that she had filled with a reduction of oatmeal and chocolate. She gave her son 3 spoonfuls of it any day.

His mom had no income to give to smugglers to safeguard they would be taken to safety, so she gave them her marriage ring.

When a child grew weak, she pronounced to him: “We have to make it to Clausnitz.”

Today, that child is 76 years old. He hasn’t set eyes on his home encampment of Hammermühle in Pomerania (in today’s Poland) given he fled 70 years ago. Hans-Peter Neitzke is a tall, honest male with a fisherman’s top and blue overalls. He rented me my room.

When people schooled one year ago that Syrian refugees would be entrance to a encampment subsequent to Clausnitz, his phone rang and a male told him he was collecting signatures opposite a refugees, Nietzke explains. “But I’m a interloper myself,” he told a man.

Clausnitz is home to 844 residents. That means that around 750 of those residents were not station in front of that train on Feb. 18. Hans-Peter Neitzke was among those who stayed home. He initial schooled about a occurrence on a radio and he was ashamed when he saw a images. He says that after World War II, during slightest half a residents of Clausnitz were refugees, Germans who had been forced to rush regions mislaid in a war, including Silesia, Pomerania, East Prussia and Sudetenland. There were also people from Dresden whose homes had burnt to a ground.

Forty-Five Bratwursts

It’s a day in mid-May and Mr. Neitzke is wearing a nicer shirt than normal – light blue and creatively ironed. He wants to take his mother to a tea dance. He’s lustful of dancing a discerning step. Before going dancing, he stops by a internal eventuality holding place behind a Clausnitz encampment story museum. A special celebration has been orderly to give locals a possibility to accommodate and learn some-more about refugees. The eventuality takes place in a center of a encampment on a drift of a internal primary school.

The encampment itself looks like so many other standard German hamlets. The hedges are precisely trimmed, a sidewalks are clean, a streets are lined with half-timbered buildings and a tulips are in bloom. The encampment used to be home to a copper cave and a travel names remember that past. Clausnitz is still home to a grocer and a bakery. Women pull around strollers during a meet-and-greet and there’s one male blank a leg. The organizers are also there.

Three sausages are blazing on a barbeque and a lady gives a debate in front of a vast tent. There are a few children personification in a circuitously stadium though no one is sitting inside and listening solely for me.

A tiny while later, a few some-more adults arrive; in a end, 45 bratwursts are sold. But a audience was small. That doesn’t indispensably meant that a villagers are xenophobic. But one could contend that a foreigners aren’t unequivocally critical to them. Or that they unequivocally weren’t meddlesome in celebrating their encounters with a refugees in a form of a party. Or that they had something improved to do. Neitzke himself usually stays a brief time during a celebration — he wants to continue on as discerning as probable to his discerning step.

On a playground, a male is station subsequent to his son, looking during a 7 dwarves puzzle. The blacksmith has an eyetooth of bullion and a behind built like an ox. His name is Thomas Hetze and he asks if we can find somewhere quieter to talk.

Hetze, 48, was one of a many sought-after male in a nation for a few days this spring. That’s when news emerged that he was a conduct of a hostel for haven seekers, and also a member of AfD.

Article source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/an-investigation-of-refugee-hostility-in-clausnitz-a-1113696.html#ref=rss