Willkommenskultur

It’s a bit like being in the eye of a news hurricane.
I’m in Munich and go under Central Station each day on the underground on my way to work. Yet I haven’t yet seen any refugees. The only impact I have had is that some work colleagues who travel from Vienna had a 90 minute delay to their train at the border on Tuesday.
So tonight I got off the underground and went to see for myself.
Call it rubbernecking if you will. I justify it as witnessing the most amazing act of generosity.
As I came up the escalator, I saw a small group of about 30 or so people coming off a train, being led by a welcoming official. They all shared the same look – a mixture of exhaustion, bewilderment, and relief. As they were taken over to the ticket office to be bought a ticket onto their final destination, two young children lagged behind. A little girl dragged her bag following her brother who looked the same age as the boy in the newspaper photographs, washed up dead on the Turkish beach. These are the lucky ones.
You can’t criticize Angela Merkel’s open door policy as being a victim of its success, or say that she has a motive to depress German wages or fill a demographic gap. She has done the only thing that anyone with a gramme of compassion would do.
I feel a bit ashamed that as a country UK isn’t doing more to help, and that as an individual I haven’t been able to do more myself.
Maybe (so called) ISIS are delighted that the millions of people they have driven from their homes and livelihoods are now overwhelming Europe. Maybe the world has to do something to get to the source of the problem – although that source is the mess left by previous military action against the “axis of evil”.
We can’t ignore the refugee issue. We have to do something. Now.
“Germany’s Willkommenskultur is right morally, economically and politically. It sets an example to the world.”