As of: February 18, 2024, 6:10 p.m
By: Michael Seeholzer
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The group of helpers was happy about the thank you meal.
© sro
The Grafinger Helpers' Circle is pleased with the support it receives for the silent integration of asylum seekers.
Grafing – Why does someone often help a total stranger at great personal cost?
Out of altruism, because you recognize your personal need, or simply because you enjoy it, you learn something from it and the help itself makes you feel good?
In the end it's probably a bit of everything, even if it does make you a bit annoyed at times.
A visit to the Grafinger Helpers' Circle explains the various motives for doing something.
It is also about the container village at the municipal building yard, the construction of which initially raised major concerns in Grafing.
There was talk of “ghetto formation”.
The reservations have now largely disappeared.
Grafing is international.
People from over 50 nations live here.
What would be a good idea for a small helper group meeting?
The choice fell on the Asian on the market square.
Grafing's mayor Christian Bauer invited.
“We wanted to show our appreciation that things are going so well,” he and Verena Schwaiger from the city’s public order office explain.
The senior among the helpers is Uthild Schütze-Nöhmke, aged 82.
She is a “newcomer” herself and actually comes from Bremen, as she reports.
She came to Grafing as a teacher at the Goethe Institute and found an apartment in Dichau.
She didn't have any integration problems herself.
“I was immediately invited to a turkey dinner by a farmer, and that’s when I came to the Dichau district,” she still fondly remembers today.
What would she want?
The authorities shouldn't take it so seriously more often.
“Sometimes they make such a fuss.
They should be more knowledgeable about human nature.”
Bureaucracy makes things difficult for the helpers
The bureaucracy is sometimes difficult for the locals to understand, even more so for people who don't understand the language.
That's why everyone in the helper group helps together, explains Ottilie Eberl, who sits on the city council for the Greens.
Everyone in the group of helpers “has their own thing that they do, and everyone does it on a voluntary basis,” she reports about the distribution of tasks.
She has been involved since Ukrainian refugees arrived in the district and is currently looking after two families.
“I organized a house for them to live in.”
She candidly admits that she sometimes gets a little annoyed.
For example, if there is a lack of willingness to take up work instead of accepting citizens' money.
Help can be low-threshold.
For example, when asylum seekers just need to be made aware of the next appointments at the clothing exchange center.
“I don’t see it as a burden,” says Gerd Berger (62) about his commitment.
Among other things, he teaches German to refugees from Eritrea.
“I enjoy it and it challenges me.” His students are very ambitious.
“One guy wanted an A in every subject and he achieved that.”
Nevertheless, it is sometimes difficult for clients to find work.
“We have very few requests from companies for workers,” confirms Bauer.
Lilli Kajnath (68) knows a strange case.
There is a so-called opportunity stay for rejected asylum seekers.
Conditions: knowledge of German, work, own apartment and immunity from prosecution.
She looks after an asylum seeker who meets all of these conditions and who has now lost his job in Aschheim because his employer there is moving to the new federal states.
“He urgently needs a job now,” otherwise he will be deported, even though he has integrated himself to the best of his ability.
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Silke Schiegl (56) is a teacher and speaks French.
She looks after asylum seekers from the former French colonies, where French is still the official language.
Often their clients first need to be literate.
Curious: They first learn to read and write German before they can do so in their own native language.
When they returned home, they still could not read or write in their own language.
Bernward Backa (63) was a professional pilot and finds his work as an asylum worker so interesting because you learn so much yourself.
He is surprised: “The children learn German in no time,” he reports.
Not a single police operation at the container home yet
Martina Yakub (55) writes project applications for the group of helpers and applies for funding.
She is the contact to the Ministry of the Interior and organizes, for example, meetings between local and foreign women.
The concerns that initially existed about the container village at the construction yard have largely dissipated.
80 people live there.
“No complaints,” was the brief statement from a saleswoman at the nursery opposite.
“I actually can’t remember any deployment there during my own time on duty,” reports the Ebersberg police group leader on duty when asked by our newspaper.
And a short survey of the women who populate the playground between the garden center and the construction yard with their children yields the following answer: “We didn’t even know that asylum seekers lived there.”
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