WTF, 'Murica?!?!

Well, here we are in 2021. It's been fun so far, eh?

The U.S. is apparently leaderless, since the only way the prez was willing to communicate with the people he was supposed to serve was via Twitter and other social media, and they’ve all banned him now. I'm sure that's great for national security. [Note to self: Work harder at convincing children to move to Europe, or at least Canada...]

It’s been nearly a week since Buffalo Man and his cohorts stormed the Capitol with nefarious intentions (what were those cable ties for, Mr. Air Force Veteran Guy? And the noose and gallows? The pipe bombs?) and we still haven’t heard from the manchild in the WH or from his VP, or (…checks notes…) anyone from the still-current administration.

Please note: I am obviously no expert, and I am trying very hard to keep myself informed. I am angry. I’ve never been a flag-waving nationalist, so I'm not claiming it’s about “OMG, my country has been attacked!” I’m angry because too many Republicans are apparently so devoted to Trump that even after inciting an insurrection against Congress, he remains in office and in the White House. I don’t get that. Why didn’t Pence invoke the 25^th Amendment? I can only guess – and then "a source close to the vice president" reportedly said this as well – that he is afraid of the damage Trump would do if faced with such a scenario. Pence would need support from the cabinet, who seems to share his fear of or devotion to Trump. Think about that: Trump is still in office because “What if he did something worse than he’s already done?” I suppose the real reason, though, is that Republicans fear losing votes of those who support Trump if they act against him.

Here’s the problem for me: He is the leader of the GOP. He is the Republican party. They and their voters chose him. Many of them apparently still believe – without providing evidence that could convince federal judges – that the election was fraudulent and stolen from Trump. He has already indicated that he will be back to run in 2024, and I imagine that’s why so many GOP lawmakers are still backing him. Voters who have supported him have openly said for four years that some of the reasons Trump is so great in their eyes is because he “says what needs to be said,” he “says what he means,” and he “talks straight.” They like and praise his style, his disregard for common decency (which some call “political correctness”), and his appalling behavior.  He is not going to change and they are not going away, so they'll be able to gleefully vote for him again.

Michelle Obama said that Joe Biden is “a profoundly decent man.” 74,222,593 American voters chose a batshit crazy narcissist over “a profoundly decent man.” Yes, I am angry.

This election was too close, and there’s no telling what will happen in four years if he runs again. 74,222,593 Americans voted for Trump in 2020. 74,222,593 people looked at that orange-tinted buffoon-turned-madman and said, “Yes, THAT is what I want to stay in the White House. THAT is what I want to lead my country.” Every single one of those votes was a signal to him that he is loved, adored, and revered. Or does anyone think he saw that number and said to himself "It's possible some of those were people who don't actually like me, but voted to support the party"? He kept going on about how he got more votes than any sitting president EVER. So obviously (to him), the election was fraudulent and stolen from him. And his supporters believe him. 

The article of impeachment brought forth by House Democrats nearly a week after the insurrection says that Trump is and will continue to be “a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.” The FBI is warning that in the coming days (between January 16 and January 20) there will be further armed protests and attacks, not only in Washington, DC but also in all 50 state capitals. And yet…and yet. Not enough Republican lawmakers, cabinet members, or members of the administration are willing to get him out. They’d rather wait and see. Abwarten und Tee trinken.

Some have said/tweeted they think Trump will have lost enough support after the attack on the Capitol that the RNC wouldn’t let him become the nominee in 4 years. That’s pretty bloody naïve. If he is not run out of town or tossed into prison, the GOP will spend the next four years excusing and enabling him to woo his supporters and the people who voted for him. Trump and his party have been feeding lies to citizens who have been soaking them up because pretty lies make them feel good, and that will continue. Quite likely already Republicans have forgotten how it is that Trump (and Giuliani, Hawley, Cruz, Boebert, and others) is/are considered at the very least partly responsible for the attack and are re-writing the story. “He never actually said that.”  “Don’t you understand sarcasm? He was joking!” “Just because someone encourages you to do something, doesn’t mean you should do it. It wasn’t Trump’s fault.” “This was no different than the protests and riots during the summer.”  Yeah, I don’t want to hear any of that.

I encourage you also to find and watch Trump's whole speech at the rally on Wednesday morning, as well as Ted Cruz's words from the back of a pick-up truck in Cumming, GA on January 2nd. And then there's Rep. Lauren Boebert, who tweeted "Today is 1776" on the morning of the insurrection as well as "The Speaker has been removed from the chambers" in the middle of the riot.

Although CNN is the only American news source we have on TV in our home and I have had it on way too often of late, I do not rely solely on it for impressions of events. Even I am growing tired of their anchors telling us how we should feel and think about events. We need to think for ourselves.

M and I watched all 2.5 hours of this podcast with Bret Weinstein and journalist and “radical pacifist” Jeremy Lee Quinn, who was filming in the midst of the mob on the west side of the Capitol. Quinn spoke directly with the guy wearing the horns before things got ugly, and his interview with the Buffalo Man is on his Twitter feed. Both Quinn and Weinstein have received hate mail from the far left and the far right, with both sides calling them enemies of their cause.

I also read political historian Heather Cox Richardson’s daily letters summarizing the madness of the day and I follow Peter Wehner on Twitter, a former life-long Republican who saw the light about Trump right from the start and said he could never follow that even though his political identity is conservative. CNN’s fact checker Daniel Dale is an important one for me because when posts go viral but are untrue (even if we wish they were true), he calls them out.

I recommend any of those and welcome recommendations you have for me of reasonable people, regardless of their politics leanings. 

One final PSA: Please, people, do your own fact-checking before you share, re-tweet, re-post, and comment online. I've been reading a lot of comments on various tweets, and some people are believing everything!

I couldn't come up with a photo for this post, so I chose an angry-looking Steinkauz. Somehow that fits quite well. His name is Joschi.

Defending the Indefensible

I’ve seen and heard some conversations recently and have read many articles and comments about the current situation at the U.S.-Mexican border. I learned one thing: I am wasting my breath. I don’t know what to say to someone who can think it’s acceptable to willfully allow children - any children - to suffer. I don’t know how to explain to someone why we human beings should care about other people – including those who are not like us.

This is my son, Alex. In this photo he is about 3 years old. He was born into a privileged, loving white family that never needed to flee from anywhere for any reason. Our neighborhood was safe, and he didn’t have to fear that gang members or drug lords would destroy his youthful joy. We provided for him, watched over him, and filled his room with books and toys. If he ever had trouble with other children, it was not because of the color of his skin, where he came from, or how poor his parents were. He was never ripped from my arms and put into a cage for an unknown period of time. He sometimes cried when I went to work and left him at a daycare or with a babysitter. His babysitter was often one of his grandparents, and when he was sad, scared, or lonely they could pick him up and comfort him with a hug.

I can’t look at what’s happening with these immigrant children without thinking about Alex when he was the tender age of many of those children sleeping for days or weeks on floor mats in metal cages. I can't help but wonder how he would have felt and how long he would have cried.

To those who are saying, „It’s the parents‘ fault! Why don’t they just apply to come into the country legally?” – I imagine it is fair for me to assume you have never had to flee your home or country due to violence, war or poverty. Lucky you. There are 68.5 million people auf der Flucht (forcibly displaced) in the world today (today, which happens to be World Refugee Day). I hope you recognize the blessing and privilege of not being one of them. 

I would like to ask a parent who has crossed or tried to cross the border illegally why he or she didn’t use the proper and legal channels. There must be reasons. I don’t think any parent would weigh the two options and casually decide, “Ach, let’s take the illegal path. It’ll be so much more fun. This journey out of poverty/violence/war hasn’t been dangerous or risky enough yet.”

To those who say “most of those kids aren’t even with their parents; criminals and traffickers are using the children to get across the border pretending to be a family” (one person even wrote that we are protecting these children by taking them away from the adults they’re with) – I understand this happens. I think it’s base to pretend, though, to suddenly care about human trafficking or slavery, which goes on every single day all over this world, including in the U.S. Those who actually care about human trafficking and slavery should do something about it, like Urmila Chaudhary is doing, rather than using the “But...traffickers!” excuse to justify cruelty toward immigrant children.

To those who ask “Well, what should we do instead?!” I say for starters, what we were doing before Jeff Sessions put this policy into action. “It wasn’t working!” they say? Of course it wasn’t working. Is there any country in the world that has solved the problem of immigrants crossing borders illegally – short of shooting them dead, as during the DDR (East Germany) years? Even that didn’t work. People who are desperate for a better life will risk anything, even death, to find security.

What should we do instead? Act with compassion. Keep these little children with the family members they came with, while continuing to look for criminals and traffickers who use the children. To separate all these children from the adults they are traveling with because some of them might be bad people is, for me, deplorable.

To U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who told a roomful of people the other day that these children are separated from their parents for “a very short period of time” and then defined that as “a week or two or three,” I’ll say he should watch his grandchildren (if he has any) at age 4 or 5 or 6 be taken away from their parents, put into a cage to sleep on a mat with a thermal blanket but no pillow, and see how that goes for “a week or two or three.”

From a CNN article: “UNICEF and UNHCR assert that all children on the move, no matter why or how they were uprooted, should receive the same care and compassion as any other child. Children are first and foremost children -- and regardless of their nationality, their legal status, or that of their parents, their welfare and rights must be at the center of our actions.”  Fitting, isn't it, that the U.S. left the UN Human Rights Council yesterday?

For those who parrot Jeff Sessions and say “American citizens that are jailed do not take their children to jail with them,” I’d like to remind them that crossing the border illegally wasn’t a federal misdemeanor requiring jail time until #45 and his gang made it so*. These parents haven’t killed anyone or caused bodily harm, they haven’t stolen anything, and they haven’t committed perjury or treason. They are being thrown in jail for seeking a better life for themselves and their children. Since there is no plan for reuniting the immigrant families after the parents’ incarceration is over and the parents often have no idea where their children have been sent, this is not the same as a citizen going to jail. A person in jail knows where his or her children are and is able to communicate with them as long as family members on the outside don’t take measures to prevent that.

*Edit: I read recently in a CNN article, which I now can't find, that it has been a federal misdemeanor for some time to cross the border illegally, but that past administrations have gone easy on the immigrants and not been strong about enforcing this.

The idea of not punishing children because a parent of theirs is in prison is not foreign or new. At my school in Wisconsin each year the students and teachers participated in a project called “Angel Tree,” which I just found out is a worldwide organization. Each class was assigned one child whose father or mother was in a Wisconsin prison. We bought clothes and a toy or two for the child, wrapped the gifts, and on the gift tag was the name of the incarcerated parent – no reference to our school or “Angel Tree.” As far as the child knew, he received a few Christmas presents from his parent even though he/she was in prison. 

To those who are saying it’s ok to store these immigrant children in cages because their parents committed a crime, I’m sorry, I disagree. If our government can find space to cage children and jail their parents, then they can find space for family detention centers to keep the families together while the now-criminal case (it used to be civil) is processed. 

Compassion, folks. Mercy. Love.

I know my words will have no effect, and yet I write anyway because I believe silence is approval or complicity.

I know many of these people are crossing the border illegally. I know there are some thugs and criminals among them. I have heard all the arguments for why this policy is unfortunate but justified (in their view), and still I choose compassion. 

"The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference."  ~Eli Wiesel

I don’t have all the answers. But I cannot understand someone who says tearing children away from their parents and putting them in cages is acceptable. Government-sanctioned cruelty. Look what we have become. We have elected a government who is proud and unapologetic of this action and refuses to end it, and we have among us many who defend and applaud the cruelty.

I hope this issue doesn’t fade away without getting solved. I hope those opposed keep raising their voices and hounding their representatives* until the child cages disappear and a different solution is found that allows families seeking shelter to stay together. I hope somebody will help these children and families – help them as if they were children from white middle-class families.

Thanks to a friend of mine, I know there is a list of organizations who are mobilizing to help.
And thanks to M, I came to this article, which addresses most of the issues much better than I have in a very reasonable and balanced tone.

*As one of approximately 9 million U.S. citizens living abroad, I have no representative in Congress that I am aware of. I contacted the [Republican] representatives I would have had based on my last address in Wisconsin and my parents’ address, but all I got was a staffer’s thank-you and spam from the reps for the next year or so.

The Truth I See

During the last few weeks I have come across various memos, notes, articles, and comments written mainly by Americans living in America about what is going on in Germany and Europe as a whole in connection with refugees and Muslims.

A month or so ago there was an article on an American online news source about "Germany" offering "women-only" cars on trains due to the sexual assault and harassment incidents in Köln on New Year's Eve. I'll get at the truth about that in a minute, but the most shocking part of that article was the comments section. The ignorance, enmity, and hostility the readers and commenters displayed exemplified the worst of humanity. I won't provide a link to the article because I do not want to make it easy for anyone to access those hateful and embarrassing comments. There were comments on there that would have been deleted in Germany because of Volksverhetzung (hate speech), and in fact the law probably would have gone after some of those writers. Germany's Grundgesetz allows for free speech, but there are reasonable lines that may not be crossed.

In this post I would like to respond to what I have seen and heard from some of my Landsleute (most or all of whom have not been here within the last 12 months though they claim to know more than they do) about what's going on in Germany.

source

Germany is now offering "women-only" train cars so they can feel safe from refugee/Muslim men while traveling by train.

One private train company in eastern Germany decided to start offering a car only for women on one stretch of track between the cities of Leipzig and Chemnitz. The German articles about this decision mentioned nothing about refugees or the events of New Year's Eve in Köln; that was the American news source's twist on the story. From there the commenters screamed about Germany "segregating" women on trains.

For many years we have had "women only" parking spaces in public parking garages, which are nearest to the exits. Is this segregation? Look up the word, people. Women are not forced to use these parking spaces or the "women only" car. They are available for women who choose to use them. In my world, if I choose to use something marked "for women only," I am not being segregated.

German women are afraid to leave their homes because groups of refugee men are attacking them at parks and pools.

I cannot speak for all German women, but I do not know of any who are afraid to leave their homes. Women of all ages living in Germany are still going regularly to grocery stores, train stations, swimming pools and shopping malls, walk their dogs, go to work, ride public transportation, and go about their daily business. The extremist right-wing AfD party wants women and children to be very afraid of foreigners, but so far I have not met any women who say they stay inside their homes out of fear.

A year from now all German women will be wearing burkas.

Again, this is what the AfD party wants us to believe, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I do not believe that in a year or ever, all women in Germany will be required to wear burkas, hijabs, shaylas, or khimars. I realized I've just lost everyone who thinks that all head coverings are burkas, but tough. This idea is just sensationalism, and I feel sorry for those who believe such nonsense (that all women living in Germany will be forced to cover themselves if they do not wish to do so).

German girls are told to dress more modestly at public pools so they don't get attacked.

I haven't been to a public pool since last summer, but I would guess there has been no change in what German girls wear while swimming - that is, mainly, string bikinis. I have heard white American men well over the age of 40 make lude comments about scantily clad teenage girls and have read about girls being sexually harassed and/or assaulted by any number of different types of males - classmates, older men, foreigners, non-foreigners, strangers, acquaintances, family members... At a wedding not long ago I saw the photographer repeatedly eye up the backsides of teenage girls wearing very short skirts. People seem to think it's much worse for a refugee to harass a girl or woman than for "one of our own" to do it - at any rate people react with more outrage when they hear about a refugee or foreigner harassing or assaulting someone even though harassment and sexual assault happens every day (in fact, at least in America, every 107 seconds). It's wrong no matter who's doing it.

Personally I don't think there is anything wrong with encouraging girls to dress and act modestly. I realize I'm old-fashioned beyond my years, so I'll just leave it at that.

There has been an increase in sexual assaults in Germany since the refugees arrived.

Has there? Which refugees are you speaking of, since Germany has been accepting refugees for many, many years? If you mean the refugees who applied for asylum in 2015, sexual assault statistics don't appear that fast, and so the statement you presented as fact is baseless and unverifiable. The most recent statistics I have found are from 2013.

The refugees aren't assimilating to the German rules and culture. Germany is changing to assimilate to the refugees.

I prefer the term and concept of integrating rather than assimilating, so I'll use that. 100% of the refugees I have met from Syria, Eritrea, and Iraq have been working on learning German (with varied degrees of determination) and doing what they can to integrate and adapt to life in Germany. I'm not talking large numbers here (50 or so, with whom I am acquainted), but I'm hoping that number will grow. How many refugees have you met in Germany who are not integrating?

In big cities, you hardly hear any German any more.

I first heard this statement about three years ago, and the person who said it was not talking about refugees. I've been to Munich, Stuttgart, Berlin, and Vienna, Austria since then. I hear plenty of German being spoken, and many other languages as well - because these are Weltstädte (World Cities). Germany is multicultural, in part because it's basically the center of Europe. I hear American English, British English, Russian, Italian, Turkish, Arabic, French, Japanese, Dutch... and I don't understand what is wrong with that. The "speek [sic] English or get out of are [sic] country" mentality of many Americans vexes me. How about embracing languages, learning about different cultures and religions, and celebrating humanity?

How do you know these refugees Germany has let in are not terrorists?

I guess in the same way I know you're not a pedophile, a rapist, or a white supremacist. In truth I don't know, but that's not going to be my first assumption about you.

The once-great German nation has been ruined by Angela Merkel.

What's with this obsession with "great", "once-great", and "great again"? Define great. Is it when white Christians are ruling and dominating? Is it when foreigners, immigrants, and non-citizens are being run out or at least persecuted? Is it when we build walls to keep people in or out? I don't know of any Germans who go around proclaiming what a great country Germany is, was, or has been. Germany is Germany. It has a rich and lengthy history, beautiful traditions, a fabulous public transportation system that allows everyone to get anywhere they need to go without having to use a car, an impressive national football/soccer team, a confusing collection of dialects, and citizens and guests of all walks of life and backgrounds. 

I love living in Germany, but I don't call it a great country. I am also one of apparently few Americans who don't call America great either. America is America, faults and all. 

There are plenty of Germans who don't like Merkel's policies, but Germany has not been ruined by her or anyone else.

Perhaps my main message here is that you should not be too quick to believe what you hear or read (including here on my blog). And it's best to be even slower at repeating something you heard or read to someone else without first verifying its truth.

I write based on my experiences and what I observe. I hear and read about neo-nazi groups and the hateful things they say and do, but I have not witnessed any of that myself. I have met good German people who are getting involved and helping the refugees in our area, welcoming newcomers, and not living in fear.

This is the Germany I know.

Meanwhile, Back in Wisconsin...

This link to a story in the Milwaukee Journal came across my radar the other day. GOP lawmakers in Wisconsin have proposed and will be deciding (or perhaps have decided by now) on whether to put in place a preventative ban on potential future restrictions on the use of plastic bags. That's right - at the final meeting of the year for the state senate, among the bills being discussed was a bill to ban the banning of plastic bag use. There are no current proposals to ban or restrict the use of plastic bags - which are harmful to the environment and wildlife, whether people choose to believe it or not - in Wisconsin, but some of the lawmakers want to make sure nobody gets the bright idea to do so any time in the future.

Update: The bill passed.

Can you imagine what would happen if Wisconsin store owners - like store owners in some other states - were no longer allowed to offer plastic bags to their customers? What on earth would people do?? Would they be expected to bring their own used bags from home (Ewwww!), or canvas tote bags - or, heaven forfend, a granny basket - for a short drive to the grocery store? Could consumers be charged 5 or 10 cents for each plastic bag they need at stores to transport their cartfuls of groceries, clothing, and paper products to their SUVs because they couldn't remember to bring along their own bags from home? My dear Lord, the horror!

I love my granny basket! I use it every time I go to the store.

The poor cashiers at Piggly Wiggly (that's a grocery store, for my non-Wisconsin readers) would have to re-train themselves not to ask "[Would you like to contribute to the world's pollution problem with] paper or plastic?"

Bravo, lads and ladies! You successfully banned bans on what hasn't been banned yet, so we don't have to face the inconvenience of doing one tiny thing for the benefit of our environment! There will be no future lawmakers stomping on our freedom to pollute our rivers, lakes, and seas, strangle wild water fowl and adorn farmers' fields and parks with plastic sacks we no longer need or that blow away on a windy day.

Germans take it as a matter of course that they need to bring their own baskets, bags, or crates to the grocery store or pay for bags at the store. Most retail stores in Germany offer bags for free, but they ask first if the customer needs one. Most often we consumers have a bag or purse large enough to stuff whatever we bought into it rather than taking a new bag. If you live here long enough you get used to sticking an extra small canvas bag or two into your purse or backpack for incidental purchases. It's just not a big problem in the grand scheme of things.

Yes, I could have ironed them, but then you wouldn't see
how well-used they are.

Why it is these Wisconsin lawmakers feel the urge to pronounce loudly and clearly that they (and therefore supposedly the people of Wisconsin they represent?) don't give a hoot about the environment - and certainly not at the expense of personal convenience - will remain a mystery to me. Proposing, discussing and passing a law to prevent potential future laws from encouraging consumers to use less plastic was apparently important enough to use up some of the "11 hours the state senate spent working yesterday during the last day of the season."

Well, good work, folks. I thought the GOP wanted less government regulation, not more. But the proposal is to prevent communities from deciding themselves whether plastic bag use should be limited? The only arguments I've seen for this ban on future restrictions is that it would be inconvenient for consumers and expensive for businesses (it would be expensive for businesses to stop providing free plastic bags??). Screw the environment - each of us only needs it to serve us for about 85 years anyway - screw marine life (a study by the World Economic Forum predicts that by 2050 there will be more plastic by weight in the world's oceans than fish), and screw the notion of trying to cut down on the tremendous amount of waste that is dumped daily into landfills in the U.S..

I'm not an active environmentalist, but I am willing to bring my own bags or basket when shopping, and I think lots of other Americans would do the same without grumbling more than a few months about it.

Have you heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
How about the Great Lakes Garbage Patch, discovered in 2012?

Researchers are not making this stuff up, folks. And yes, one person does make a difference, however small. Bring your own bag(s) when you go shopping, or at the very least, reuse the bags you bring home as many times as you can. Use paper bags to cover textbooks or wrap presents. Use plastic for garbage can liners or pet poop picker-uppers. They'll still end up in the landfills, but at least they were used more than once.

Debo's Story

This is a plea to anyone who sees this. Please choose compassion over fear, understanding over intolerance, and empathy over hatred. I do understand fear, but please do not reject an entire race or religion because of the very bad apples. Find and read stories of individual refugees and families, and compare them to your own story, your children's lives, and your parents. Try to imagine in their place you and your children, siblings, parents, nieces, nephews, and cousins - having to choose between abandoning your home and fleeing for your life or staying put and being killed or forced into service for an evil army because you weren't lucky enough to be born in America.

I'm not asking you to donate money, and I'm not asking you to get physically involved and help. I'm only asking that you not publicly reject or applaud the rejection of fellow human beings who are not so different from you - young people who want to study and find good jobs to support their families, parents who want their children to live in safety and be able to walk to and from school without fear of being killed by bombs or rockets, people who don't want to be forced to serve a corrupt government or a terrorist organization.


In our local newspaper the other day there was an article about a young man who fled his war-torn homeland after imprisonment and brutal abuse and made his way to Germany. With the editor's permission, here is my translation and summary of that article.

The real brutality of the civil war in Syria, which began in 2011, is not shown on TV in the interest of piety. Persecuted and in constant mortal danger, injured and traumatized, millions of Syrians have fled their homeland with nothing but the clothes on their backs and precious few worldly possessions to escape the violence and destruction. The journey itself is dangerous as well and arduous, but leaving their homes was the less awful of two unacceptable choices.

Abdulkalik Debo is one of these millions, and since October he has been living in the town of Weitingen, not far from Horb. Though he is only 19 years old (one year younger than my son), he has witnessed atrocities most people his age will never know.

Debo (because his last name is short and easy to pronounce, everyone calls him that) was born in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, where he also attended a school which has since been destroyed by bombs. Aleppo is the second largest city in Syria and was named the "Capital of Islamic Culture" in 2006. Its old town was ranked a Unesco World Heritage Site. Since then the city has been mostly destroyed, especially the quarter in which the rebels fighting against Assad have hunkered in.

in Aleppo
source

One day several years ago the war came to the Debo family with their six children. One of Debo's cousins was severely injured by shrapnel from a rocket attack on his way to school. Debo (15 at the time) and a friend called for a taxi to take his cousin to the hospital. They were sent from one hospital to another because the injuries were too severe for regular care - eventually they ended up at the university clinic. During the drive they complained about the Assad regime and the brutality of his troops and the militia, not knowing that the taxi driver was an Assad supporter. He reported these teenagers, and the friends were arrested and turned over to the security police. Debo didn't have his i.d. papers with him and resisted being "recruited" by the government troops - he was much too young anyway, but he looked older because of his strong build and growing beard. His parents were summoned because the police didn't believe his reported age.

Debo was kept under arrest with 200 other prisoners in a room so small that it was impossible for anyone to lie down. They could only lean on each other, half sitting and half collapsed, and sleeping was impossible. During his parents' interrogation Debo was handcuffed and forced to kneel with a sack over his head in the next room. He could hear his parents, but they did not know he was so close. Remember, he was 15 years old.

During the time of his imprisonment Debo - like all the other prisoners - was badly abused, frequently beaten with clubs, kicked with combat boots, and burned. There was very little to eat. Debo doesn't remember anymore how long he had to endure these conditions.

On the day of the massacre in 2013, in which 200 opponents of Assad who had had high hopes about the "Arab Spring" revolution were murdered, Debo should have been among the dead. He remembers the day. Groups of prisoners were marched outside and one by one slaughtered with meat knives or shot when they refused to recognize Assad as their "god". By the time it was  Debo's turn, blood was already flowing through the yard like a river. A soldier shouted at him, and Debo answered, "My god is Allah." He was stabbed and beaten like the others and lost consciousness. His body was tossed into the nearby riverbed, where several kurdish villagers found him a short time later. Debo was one of four men they found still alive. He only regained consciousness a few days later in the villagers' home.

When he had recovered somewhat, he wanted to return home as quickly as possible. But no one was there. His family's house was partially destroyed and the home of his brother and his wife and child was deserted. Then the next shock. A neighbor told him those of his family who were still alive had all fled to Turkey and thought Debo was dead. Two of his siblings (ages 24 and 26) were killed when the house was destroyed, and Debo's twin brother was killed by a rocket on his way to a shopping center.

Debo made his way to the container camp just over the border with several thousand other refugees, where he was able to find the surviving members of his family. They hadn't heard from him in five months and had assumed he'd been killed. When his mother first laid eyes on him she fainted. She hardly recognized him - he'd lost 125 pounds (56 kg) during his ordeal and now weighed only 132 pounds(60 kg).

The family was able to stay together for two years, and even grew by one when a granddaughter was born. Debo found work as a specialist repairing mobile phones and was able to save enough to get to Germany - a journey that cost several thousand Euros.

His mother has suffered from the whole ordeal and has health and heart problems. Debo himself still suffers from the trauma and wakes frequently from horrible nightmares. Because of the physical abuse he has stomach problems and difficulty keeping his balance.

They are safe now, but because the family arrived in Germany at different times, they were separated and sent to different housing facilities in opposite ends of Germany. His parents and remaining siblings are near Flensburg in the north.

Debo will be allowed to visit the rest of his family for ten days over the Christmas holidays. In the mean time Debo is learning German and hoping to eventually work as a medical devices technician.

refugees from Syria and Eritrea learning German
One of these men was one test away from finishing his higher education and medical degree
when his university shut down. Now he's in Germany learning German and basically starting over.

Please have compassion. And perhaps speak up in the name of mercy when people around you rage against offering shelter to those who are fleeing from war, corruption, violence and terrorism.

We are all members of the human race, and we have more similarities to each other than differences.