Twenty eighth and t w. I am a man from syria fled war in his homeland. Sasha astonished from bosnia fled genocide in his homeland. Antonio scar metal from chile fled an occupational ban in his homeland. Judas care from germany fled the nazis. Knew not from nigeria flood violence in the family. Five people who have one thing in common they had to make fresh starts in strange countries. We all wanted to be german by all means there are sheehans wanted to be german. Did the iranian girls the old when i did some of the me when did i so try to get blue eyes and blond hair. Falling from the titian trying to be trapped but. Nica of no knock came to hamburg in one thousand nine hundred ninety nine at the age of nineteen her german mother had left her when she was just two after that she grew up with her father and stepmother in nigeria. She would rather not talk about why she left but her brother wrote a book in which he tells how the stepmother terrorized abused and starved the children. In nigeria she was forced to do the housework in hamburg she enjoys cooking nigerian specialities. It was a time. A stranger here in the beginning you know coming here. Thinking half of my life so that was half white and thats right. Because that half caste in our country. Which is in name for people who are mixed. Who have said privileges coming to germany i realize that that wasnt the case when somebody called me that oh youre in the go oh im in the oh wow i didnt know that. I have ended up and be spotted in twenty sixteen having fled the war in syria his trek took him through Turkey Greece serbia croatia and austria before he finally reached germany in v spot and he shares a ten square meter room with five other men in a refugee hostel his wife and their two small sons are still in syria. I feel very ashamed because i am im in the sea of food with my friends. With with my ok. And the people are still dying for the third die in school or to. Know without forethought. You dont can save all or the people together you will fear you will decide to save yourself or your family its very difficult time for me i miss my boys my wife my father are more. I come off mind was born and raised in this Palestinian Refugee camp in yarmuk near damascus he learned to play the piano at the age of five. He was still playing when islamists overran and laid waste to yarmuk in twenty fifteen. Or not before one of many things happened were the most horrible things we see sitting near the pyramid and think. Here we have a sniper i know her power and i see their little game dying near the piano and these are the horrible things in my mind i dont think about how the rides or the other thing i can guarantee we see the reason we dont mean anything. I ham cannot forget what he saw now he fears for his family who are still in syria. Thats forgotten of all forty s when the first five thousand bosnian refugees arrived in germany on special trains they received a warm welcome public willingness to help and make donations was running high from the wartime suffering was at least on the refugees faces weeks as was their gratitude for the fact that germany offered them refuge to watch nancy all phenomena. Such astonishing is one of those five thousand he and his parents arrived in heidelberg where an uncle lived in the summer of one thousand nine hundred two he was fourteen years old and new to words of german. This family applied for asylum and had to wait months to find out if they could stay. So. Theres all this uncertainty even if you make it somewhere else you could be deported to a country where youre not welcome at all and to which you do not want to return visit with those three months were awful for me my family they were. Astonished family were put up in heidelberg emmotts go and socially deprived area with many ethnic minorities he would later say the place that made the most effort to integrate people was a gas station he wrote there in the parking lot we taught each other bad german and how to install car radios. As the dust on the found that we were not from germany did not play such a major role in emirates going to which was a cultural melting pot anyway at the same time there was always a kind of Competition Among the ethnic groups it wasnt just a case of peacefully Holding Hands and going to school together. Usually the poles stuck with the poles and the turks with the turks. But there are also outstanding examples of people mixing it with your of love stories or common interests like football or sport in general how. The neck of bridge in heidelberg helped him to feel at home too it reminded him of the bridge in his hometown shagrat except here it was safe. Judas care had to leave her homeland too. She was just turning ten when the National Socialist seized power in germany in one thousand nine hundred thirty three. She fled to switzerland with her older brother michael. D. For me it is just this us family is everything especially for a child. I always felt safe in creek but less so during the war when the bombs found of our home was destroyed by bombs you know but our family was there for us me. Judiths care had a sheltered upbringing and a comfortable part of berlin the carers were jewish but not especially devout. Alfred care was a famous theater critic and an opponent of the nazis one night in february one thousand thirty three under the cover of darkness the family abandoned their home in the leafy berlin suburb of to revive. Just in time to the secret police were on the verge of cancelling their travel papers the nazis confiscated everything the carers had to leave behind. From switzerland their flight took them to paris. It was a big adventure for a ten year old. I loved it i was very happy in paris it was lovely the line of water that my mother learned french cuisine you know you have never before had we even so well paris was wonderful and the windows. Apparently i once said to my father. It was dark and our apartment was on a very high floor because the rent was low it when you live tyra walked out for beleaguered him and he wanted and from our little balcony you could look out over the paris and apparently i said to my father is not great to be a refugee and. This isnt hellish and fished into side that must have amused him some of it because it must have been unbelievably hard for my parents that it owned loutish with. Her father tried without success to sell his work as the money ran out the parents grew more desperate. Than i would to. My mother said oh yes i only found this out later. That she wanted to commit suicide in paris that. See what. It was in some lesson from my father that someone found. Small began. To. Play for money and he said she wanted to take the two of us with her my brother and me. One thought it would make me a man portable. I was shocked of course. Shifted and i saw the date on the list of i had only just learned friend shouted hottie still. It would have been very annoying to have to diet just when i was learning to speak french ellicott i think function should clinton. You know hold. As well in the one nine hundred seventy s. Berlin the city judith care once fled became a place of refuge for people fleeing persecution many of them came from chile august second. You know you. My number your son to my name is antonio scotmid i am a writer from chile. I left she lay in one nine hundred seventy three because of a coup detat against the democratically elected president Salvador Allende that led to a military dictatorship in my country and that is that if one day how to. Cite them i have been living in the west berlin with my family my neighbor for eight years. So i ducked out of what i invest will be by the from being here. Antonio was lucky through family connections he got a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange service. With this. This i decided to leave the country of my own free will. I was not tortured a single time served and i just lost my job which is very little compared to the suffering other people went through so for your. With the. Four here where todays concert goers wait for their star to perform was a place of torture and murder. After the putsch the military interned thousands of people in the soccer stadium people were indiscriminately arrested and tortured the stadium became a concentration camp under the new ruler augusta can share. One hundred people were confined to a single locker room and had to share two toilets. More than two thousand men and women were murdered more than one thousand are still missing today. Antonios car matter is safe but as a writer he lived off his language now he had to get by in a strange country whose language he did not speak. Yes you have it bad mia i was reunited with my family when i got to germany of seahorse and i saw at the time i had two sons of seven and five years of age. But obviously to make a long story short i must say that to learn the language very quickly and the conversations i had including with german journalists for example over the telephone rang out in my idea. That the people spoke very fast on the telephone the witness and when someone called me and offered me Something Like it or ask the question. I would pass the receiver to my son and my son went to answer for me if he. Like antonios comment his children sasha stunned Church Learned german quickly and heidelberg he attended a special school for immigrants the bosnian boys german and history teachers gave him extra attention. Given they were more than just teachers they were great people and i think they look after us and not just work to rule. They were there for and they understood various aspects of our situation and them even. When he went to university he moved from the outskirts of heidelberg to the town center the only reason he was allowed to stay in germany was that he had a chance of going to college his parents implications for permanent residency were rejected and they emigrated to the us in a way he was lucky. And i know without a doubt that mine was a single fate and that it was an exception rather than a rule and i dont have dark skin and you cant necessarily see that im not a german as bad as that is it makes all things easier in germany so im doing it. Who has dual german nigerian citizenship is sometimes reminded of this but she also enjoys newfound freedoms that had never been in the police way you know. Where you could say you want something on you get immediately like have access to education free. And having you know just having your own space you own your own room you own your own time we could just shut the door and see this is my time now so i think having that kind of. Definitely. Helped me grow and gain an identity find out who i really am. Right from the start she soaked up german she learned the language went to school and university but her heart was in Something Else. I started like recording myself on my dick and then i meant it and then we decided to explore more you know how the on the ground sessions that we used to do in different parts just doing music for love not you know not for the money not for competition just. Doing it and he introduced me to a different. Making music keyboard hip hop into my life. Though i already think i was here before he kind of like just you know he educated me a lot. On here and i on the other hand being on africa introduced. The african side to him and then being in germany. You know it was like an amazing mix. Her mixture of dubs soul reggae and afro beat went down well and in two thousand and five nikkei released her first album for more followed along with tours of europe and the u. S. Her songs are about god and family but also about violence environmental destruction and social injustices in nigeria. Have never been. In well. Put it. That we dont. I hope and if. I. Turn. Peoples lives. Moved. In it in a speech all week. And english her Mother Tongue. It is a language in which she feels and thinks there was a time when she would rather have forgotten about her african roots and today her African Heritage is part of her. Growing. His native language was not the right around tony lost when he fled chile he lost his subject matter to. The the. That it was pointless to continue talking in the same terms and language addressing the same subculture and subconscious as i did when i communicated with much of land readers. My work had many references to soccer players to movie stars to the streets and districts of the city to what i shared in common with other hands the. I love but now i was experiencing Something Else which could be very big. The prince. Of exile. It was a turning point in exile was to become his most important literary thing it was to play. A role in many of his works. You can remember when. I wrote a novel called no possum nada nothing happens. There is the story of an exiled boy i give you brought here by its parents or i dont recall exactly about fourteen years old. Is a novel strictly about exile a tale of exile from the point of view of youth and. The young child is torn. Hes in love with a german girl but his chilean parents want him to take part in solidarity events for chilean dissidents. Here. In the. C. D. U. A uniquely exile tells of his life here of his exile parents equally of his friends and school when his first love and. This is pretty much how he falls in love with a girl who sells records at a music store and it him at the end of their first dates theres the pieces they enjoyed the last piece of the magazines they read and the music they listen to. The other in the early one how to learn german by listening to the lyrics of songs while walking down the street wearing headphones and singing along to learn the song and they would like oh you. Provide me with the leopard of hundreds. Ok we always try to do things with the whole family so for example. Gabriele place piano. Blues and jazz. And he is very sad. And its ok for example i mean every day situation. We were all very sad when School Started again after Vacation Time but everybody. So i decided to write a blues song for gabriella governors who so far and. What i mean my. Day is today. Day is the first day. The experiences antonios car meant to describes in no possum nada are similar to those of his sons they grew up in between more. Chiko something that would not be i mean that if your children learn languages very quickly and quickly established relations with their peers in. This way that you know just in our case we had to leave our country and it was very interesting to see how children adapt as to the different rules of play but at the knee and he said few lives first they had allegiances to their parents but he made it who could not live in their homeland he said yeah get them for you yes but youre going to commit here were going to secondly they had allegiances to themselves. That their future cities where their prospects for us to their peers a sense of their music of the streets and the excitement of a new language and the owner. They had to reconcile two different worlds the world outside which called out to them saying live with me if we dont and the world of their parents which called out think of your country where remember and think of the time when we can return values. Symbolized the war and i know we were always sure that we would return to chile but we just hoped and waited for it to be possible sometimes see really. In one thousand nine hundred eighty nine the military dictatorship finally came to an end in chile antonio returned to some to go with his second wife a german their two older sons stayed on in berlin for them chile was no longer home. I have also yearns for his homeland syria he misses his piano to the i. R. S. Islam ists for whom music is sacrilege burned it here in germany a music store allows him to play. By himself father was an instrument maker and had his own store back in syria for much of his life he dreamed of taking over the store from his father. Yes when i am still in syria thats my and everyone i have my home have. In the home no. Sit with my family. We need to invent things in this field and i teach the children all the time around the point in mindful. They have. Its and i home for new music as their. People come to hear i have music and his stories today its too close up for me to play this game. With a beauty for a friend we will play a song. From germany make some things happen maybe change. This is crazy were going to. Shall believe that its out of the can be bought out of the mind of the lawyer that we. Believe. Stuff. But not that. We have that big. Get my hands father wanted him to become a concert pianist but a shrapnel wound in his left hand dashed those hopes now he plays to bring attention to the suffering in syria. Biggest day in the. World with. Some reform new music in some way to play in the stairway d. But thats only. In like our free for booze. Its a lot of things for me this is why i dont just mind when would i go and do i have a lot of things in my. In my. Bed exists. On cd on the phone but. When i am off man had been in germany without his family for a year this arab supermarket was the closest he came to home. Many of his relatives and friends died in their attempts to flee syria as the battles raged the war has triggered europes biggest refugee crisis since the second world war. After his family had to close down its music store i have ahmed sold falafel in syria sometimes he plays concerts here but he doesnt have a steady job. In august twenty sixth seen his wife to honey and two children finally got permission to join him in germany and they moved into an apartment in the spawn. But his parents were still in yarmuk or water and food were running out and the war continued. Obviously for. Its for me the music physiotherapy when i want to play a concert i would play it in the bathroom the music its still in my blood i need to get it out you know these things its a lot about concert but ive been a i like to play piano in my house with my boys and was this was i would make a thread of it because i still would not exist when i say youngster this screw up the chance when the people tell me you want a great pianist think you. But could it be in the us that make it a lot of things. You know. At least he has his own piano again now. But he would still rather go back to syria with his family nobody knows if that will ever be possible even when the war is over it will take decades to rebuild the country and clear the land mines but he will still be homesick. In heidelberg the writer sasha astonished made his new language his living. That is up to us yacht to get about the entire flight the asian have been sucking sweets man every time he opened one he folded the wrapper carefully into a square and stuffed it into the pocket on the back of a seat in front of him. The actually it was overflowing with little squares of sweet wrappers a lot of ice that was ignored by the asian harvest as normally he would have been happy with that but t