Germans Open Their Homes To Refugee Roommates (country, place, people)
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Asylum-seekers are flooding into Germany in record numbers, with more than 200,000 applying for that status last year, many from Muslim countries, according to the government.
Berlin residents Mareike Geiling and her boyfriend, Jonas Kakoschke, have a different approach.
"We don't like the idea of putting these people into one place where many, many" people live, says Geiling, who is 28.
So the couple decided to launch Refugees Welcome, a website in English and German that matches asylum-seekers with people willing to share their homes with them. They have more than 400 applications in the works — in Germany as well as Austria.
Only 199,600 to go and they'll be covered for the first year!
The altruism is admirable, but I would be interested to see the reality of sharing a flat with a refugee. It could a rewarding experience or a nightmare.
Only 199,600 to go and they'll be covered for the first year!
The altruism is admirable, but I would be interested to see the reality of sharing a flat with a refugee. It could a rewarding experience or a nightmare.
Or it might help the refugee integrate more smoothly.
It's very sad what's happening in Western Europe. In 20 years Germany will no longer be Germany.
Already, with the decline of Lutheranism, cities like Hamburg and Berlin likely have more practicing Muslims than Christians. Catholic Germany is more observant, so the transition will take longer. In a generation, Germany's historical legacy will be largely a memory.
And this is not to say that there is something "bad" with the newcomers or necessarily "good" about the natives. But countries have a right to determine their national character, and I find it sad that Germany has decided to toss its heritage into the wastebasket, under the guise of "multiculturalism".
Germany has been hoping its historical legacy will just be a memory for about a half century now...
I hope you are not so ignorant to define an entire country's historical legacy based on a war. Where exactly do you live, and can you explain why your country has a past without sin?
Are you saying that since Germany has past sins, then they must atone by ridding the country of their heritage? Why, exactly? Germany is one of the greatest countries on earth, and has given a great deal to the world, from business, to culture, to science. It isn't clear to me why Germany has to become a third-world country filled with people contemptuous of modernity today because of sins of the past.
The fact is that multiculturalism is slowly destroying Western Europe from within. You see it in the low economic growth, the loss of social cohesion, the problems with EU unity. People need to stand up and demand that newcomers adapt to their host nations, or they are no longer welcome.
I'm just saying, that is how many germans feel about their own past.
I am German by birth and have no shame of the past. Why would I? I was not alive, and Germany has been a model citizen of the world community for 60 years.
I have relatives who fought in the war, but they are dying off, and they were obviously not Nazis. They went to war for their country as young men. They also suffered terribly, with one uncle losing his leg in a Siberian work camp, and being forced to walk from Siberia back to Germany after the war.
They were just men fighting for their country, rural types with no knowledge of geopolitics or Nazi atrocities. They were in the Rhineland, and never even met a Jewish person before. They were victims of the Nazis too.
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