Refugees: Germany Land of Hope

GOTHA, GERMANY:  In welcoming thousands of refugees shunned by others Germany occupies moral high ground. Stories and images of desperate migrants fill television news. Nightly there are informed debates about the challenge of integrating Syrian and other Muslim asylum seekers into German society. 

The impulse to help is visceral, shared by the public and elected leaders.  Chancellor Angela Merkel probably speaks for millions when she declares, “I am happy that Germany has become a country that many people outside of Germany now associate with hope.”

Germany’s biggest political parties, Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, are at one on immigration, agreeing that Germany can absorb 500,000 refugees this year.  Only Bavaria’s Christian Social Union is skeptical.

The welcome signal from the top resonates.  This week I watched youthful volunteers at the Frankfurt train station wearing “refugees welcome” shirts in English and Arabic handing out fruit and soft drinks to new arrivals. 

Germany’s affirmative stance has struck a chord elsewhere, including the Pope’s call for Catholic families to take in refugees, and Britain and France increasing the number they’re willing to accept.

But there is a limit to German generosity and of course the burden of accepting refugees must be shared.  The ongoing flood of refugees underscores a complete absence of EU consensus on immigration.  Much of the disagreement is historical and cultural.

Greece, the first EU country where Iraqi and Syrian migrants arrive after transiting Turkey, is weak politically and prostrate economically.  Greek authorities on islands adjacent to Turkey were overwhelmed. EU migration guidelines were ignored. Greece merely transported refugees to Athens and put them on trains headed north.

A single rail line links Greece with Belgrade through Macedonia. Departing from a EU country the refugees walk the final mile to the border where the Macedonians have been ill prepared to receive them. Once aboard trains—as I observed last weekend in Skopje—the refugees arrive in another non EU country Serbia, which has done well in moving them through to the Hungarian border.

It is in EU member country Hungary where the problem is most severe.  Hungary, led by a rightist nationalist party, has greeted the refugees with contempt and the ugly scenes at the Budapest station and the Serbian border have spread worldwide.

But it’s not just Hungary. Other EU countries-- formerly communist Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and the three Baltic States—oppose quotas on accepting refugees. Romania and Bulgaria, the poorest EU members, say they won’t take any. And Bulgaria—where 500 years of Turkish oppression is still talked about—is viewed as the EU country least welcoming to Muslims.

Critics of Germany’s stance say the country is naïve and foolish, that the floodgates having been opened, ISIS and other terrorist groups will have placed their people among the refugees. Germans are aware of that danger but count on strict accountability as migrants are required to study German and regularly update their status.  Unlike illegal immigrants into United States those coming to Germany seldom vanish into a marginalized shadow economy.

Much is at risk in this refugee crisis. Unless resolved soon the free movement of people within the EU’s single market—the Schengen agreement—could be modified. Germany’s asylum policies are in flux and already migrants from countries no longer labled conflict zones—Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro—are being sent back.

Germany is no stranger to mass migrations and is acutely aware of its horrific failure to protect Jews during the Nazi period. After the war Germany resettled over five million Germans expelled from lost territories. There was a wave of migration out of East Germany prior to unification. The current flood of people, however, is the greatest since the war and shows no sign of abating.

As with the euro currency crisis, Chancellor Merkel says the future of the European Union is at stake. “If Europe fails the refugee question,” she says, “then a founding impulse for a united Europe will be lost.”

For now at least Germany holds high the banner of human rights. 

Recalling Post-Communism, Romania 1996

BUCHAREST, September 18, 1996: The old Ilyushin 18 (YR-IMF) was built in 1964.  Its five-man crew from Tarom had been together a long time, including a year on contract to Cubana where the transatlantic crossing went Prague, Rekyavik, Gander, Havana. 

The crew strolled into the Timisoara airport lobby at dinnertime.  Waiting for the flight to Bucharest, I was delighted to learn that this would be our crew and the IL-18 the aircraft.  I had thought the flight to the capital was the newer BAC 11 twinjet on the tarmac.

One of the crew, a rotund man with two stripes on his sleeve, spoke English. He was pleased when I expressed enthusiasm about getting another ride in an 18 before they are retired.  He introduced me to the captain across the table who asked if I would be his guest in the cockpit during the flight to Arad and Bucharest.

My only time on an IL-18 had been with Interflug, the defunct East German carrier, from Budapest to Leipzig in mid-1982.  I remember the squishy seats that were so low that you had raise up to see out of the window.  Then there was the memorable fact that GDR passengers ignored the no-smoking sign despite the flight attendant’s command to follow instructions.  

As with the doors on other Soviet planes, the Tupolev 134 and 154, you have to duck when coming aboard.  Large lamps were spaced along the ceiling. The cabin had a big section in the middle and smaller ones fore and aft separated by the galley and lavatories. A lumpy red carpet rolled down the center aisle. The sturdy seatback tables had an uneven spackled metal surface. Unoccupied seats were folded completely forward. Thin plastic rims encased the circular windows. The overhead storage rack was a continuous narrow shelf that could accommodate coats and small briefcases. 

In the cockpit I felt I was in a John Wayne movie where he is a piloting a B-24 against the Japanese. There were white cloth covers over the floppy earphones worn by the pilots. The cockpit gauges and dials were primitive; nothing was digital.  The navigator sat squished behind the captain at a cramped table with a scope illuminated by a crane-necked lamp. The radio operator’s setup was identical behind the co-pilot, dozens of gauges were arrayed behind him. He clutched a primitive microphone in one hand. As we taxied, the throbbing and shaking from four engines made conversation difficult.

The flight engineer sat in a middle jump seat that had no back.  He seemed to be squatting on the floor as he pulled the center levers backwards and forward.  The silver-haired captain with halting English sat low to the floor and reached up to grasp the throttles as well as the yoke.  Sluggish dials got thumps from the back of his hand and once a healthy whack. A sliding window was half open as we prepared for take off.

When the brakes were released we surged forward, the engines groaning and metal vibrating as we gained speed. In the air the flying was smooth. I savored a rare experience, the thrill tempered from observing outdated technology.

During takeoff and landing I was surprised at the cackle of multiple voices from heads clustered in close proximity behind the captain.  I thought the cacophony was dangerous until I realized these were men who knew each other well and had performed these tasks hundreds of times.  Approaching Bucharest there were again several heads peering past the pilot’s shoulder. Positions and instructions were called out.

With the night sky clear it was exhilarating to cruise above the lights of the capital and then float down towards Bucharest’s domestic airport.

Having never been in the cockpit of a big plane during landing I was surprised how fast we descended. For me the lighted runway resembled the deck of an aircraft carrier.  I thought we were too high but a moment later we touched down. 

Parked at the gate, I asked the captain his impressions of the IL-18. He replied, “I like having four engines and a crew instead of a computer that does the flying. And the plane is strong and it is safe.”

It was a peak experience reminding me of the time not long ago in the States when  Eastern Airlines retired an American version of the IL-18, the Lockheed Electra, from the New York to Washington shuttle.   The full-page newspaper ads declared, “Farewell old prop.”