Status: 12.10.2023, 20:20 PM
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Relatives and friends lie in each other's arms after an evacuation flight lands at Frankfurt Airport. © Boris Roessler/dpa
Tears, relief, hugs: The first German nationals evacuated from Israel on special flights landed in Frankfurt on Thursday evening. Despite all the relief, many are thinking of friends in Israel.
Frankfurt/Main - Actually, Ariana doesn't want to cry. But when she comes face to face with her boyfriend Arthur, the young woman is overwhelmed by emotions, strokes his face and curly hair again and again, sobbing in relief. Behind her and Arthur's mother, Andrea Maassen, lie days full of fear and the feeling of powerlessness and helplessness.
"It's nice to be here again, even if only men with German passport numbers get the hotline," says the young man, who started his voluntary social year in a nursing home in Jerusalem only five weeks ago. Four and a half hours on hold were necessary to get the plane ticket. He did not feel much of the effects of the conflict. "Once, a rocket exploded on the way to the bunker. Then there were the fighter jets that flew over us on the way to Gaza - but that's about it."
With a loud cry of "Daddy, Daddy!" Marco Rocco's little daughter clutches her father's legs. The whole family has come to pick him and his brother up from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land that ended very differently than expected.
"A woman in the row in front of me asked, 'Are we out of rocket range now?'" he says of the return flight. He said he was "totally relieved" to be back in Germany. "I hope I don't hear the sirens for a long time." He wasn't afraid for his life, "but there were 70, 80 attacks, which is very nerve-wracking."
An elderly couple came to the airport with a teddy bear to pick up their granddaughter. "I'm still shaking inside," says the woman, she doesn't want to say more. "It's all too much for us, we just can't talk."
A German student is relieved to be safe, but seemed depressed at the thought of his two Israeli roommates in Tel Aviv. He is safe because of the privilege of a German passport, he says thoughtfully. One of his best friends had been drafted into the military and somewhere in southern Israel. "I know that in the next few days I will keep searching the lists of names of the fallen on the Internet," he says of the fear for Israeli friends.
Many returnees don't want to talk. Above all, those who have had to leave family members or partners without a German passport behind in Israel are depressed. Even those who receive them are still full of concern about the situation in the Middle East, despite all the relief. "I can hold my son in my arms," says one woman, describing the conflict of emotions. "But the war continues." dpa