Just a Shout Away
By Ewan
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It’s dark. The streets around the Hauptbahnhof are darker than they should be. Oh, there are street-lights. Perhaps they have more darkness to battle against here. Darkness and ghosts. German trains have had strange cargo in the past. Some say it serves us right. Our atonement is our burden and we should smile for it. Sylvester last year was dangerous, I see no reason why tonight will be different. After all, we have invited more in since then.
Jutte isn’t coming this year. She did come to the protest after the attacks in Köln. She doesn’t feel safe, she says. There is no safety in numbers, when your number is smaller than theirs. I go. I go to them all. I have the right. They cannot make me a victim. Not when they claim that status for themselves. Munich is always cold in December, sometimes there is snow. More often the night means ice and slush underfoot and conversations measured in breathy steam carried away on the bitter air.
We change. The country changes. I remember the Imbiss stands when they sold nothing but wurst and pommes. Now there are Turkish kebabs and strange thin sausages called Bosna from the splintered Balkans. What will the new refugees bring? I don’t know. I think this time it is different. We have always taken the dispossessed. We have six million outsiders on our conscience, I know this. But this time…
You think it strange, that someone like me was attacked. Middle-aged, conservatively dressed, what possible provocation could I have made. I should not say it, but I will. My presence, my existence, the concept of me, my independence; all of these were an affront to my attacker. I too have been an outsider. I was an Osi. I was born on the other side of the Inner German Border, in a little place called Weimar Norah. Not too long after the Berlin Wall fell, I came to Munich, looking for work, looking for a better life. I heard the words ‘Stinkende Osi’. I know only the second word changes over the decades: Jew, Serb, Croat. The list will never end.
And now I am shouting similar words at the Bahnhof, another scene of sexual assaults on women. Women like me.
The Rolling Stones played a concert in Berlin after the wall came down. My girlfriends and I hitched a lift and we watched them in the Velodrome. I remember the crowd during “Gimme Shelter”.
We all joined in singing the words that we'd heard on transistor radios after dark. We should have paid more attention. For it is true. “It’s just a shout away.”
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Comments
ah, gimme shelter right
ah, gimme shelter right enough. We always pick out victims. Outsiders who have no voice. No political power. No sovereinty. Poor. The list doesn't change. The victims do.
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The Germans are honourable people
who have had to bear the weight of their history for 70 years. They have suffered more than we "good" Westerners fully understand to re-build their country and reputation.
To finger point at those who demonstrate against the wrong doings of migrants as a sort of "German disease" when no other leader of any country in the World has shown such generosity and bravery is immoral and bigotry in the extreme.
If the UK, USA, France, Belgium, Hungary, Holland Australia, Arab countries etc etc etc etc had allowed the same relative numbers of migrants into their countries and if there had been no popular uprising against them, then sure . . . point a finger, but until that happens put-the-fuck-up and shut-the-fuck-up.
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Please do not misunderstand me, Ewan
My S-T-F-U comment was not aimed at you. I fully understand the point you make here. I just feel those in our global community who point to the actions of the Nationalists in Germany as "Oh the Krauts are at it again" are very very wrong.
It may well have been a poor idea to allow hundreds of thousands of needy migrants into the country without addressing the not inconsiderable culture gap between Muslim and Christian people, but at least they tried to do their bit, for whatever reason, when just about every other Western nation is doing their best to avoid taking any responsibility for the Syrian and Migrant problem.
None of them have the right to criticise the Germans. Nationalism, racism and xenophobia is on the rise most Western nations. It is not a German sickness it is a global one. Sadly and scarily this is just the start.
The second and third generation following WW2 have had it too good and they have forgotten or don't understand the importance of openness and this could lead to a dangerous unravelling of all achieved since 1945, especially in Europe . . . and what happens in Europe will affect the rest of the World.
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