A safe place for Roma children in Berlin

Amid discrimination and racism, a neighborhood church provides a safe place for kids

By Paul Jeffrey

Published in response magazine in July/August 2013.

            Yuliana Marinovah arrives home in the morning just in time to see her two boys off to school. She works all night cleaning restaurants in Berlin, a job for which she makes the equivalent of $2.50 an hour. That’s a fraction of Germany’s minimum wage, but Ms. Marinovah is a Roma immigrant from Bulgaria. Although she has a legal right to live in Germany, under European Union rules she doesn’t yet have the right to work. So her boss knows she won’t make a complaint. “It’s not much money, but I’ve got to do what I need in order to survive,” she said.

            Her husband Genadi Hristov was a truck driver back in Bulgaria, making the Varna-Sofia run for a cement factory. But then a Japanese company purchased the factory and promptly closed it, leaving the Turkish-speaking family struggling to survive. At the same time, rising antagonism toward Bulgaria’s Roma population—often known as Gypsies—made the family uncomfortable. So they borrowed some money and set off for Berlin, staying at first with Mr. Hristov’s sister, who has lived in Berlin for 20 years.

            Mr. Hristov’s efforts to find employment have been unsuccessful. He solicited work from Turk employers in the southeastern districts of Berlin, neighborhoods where new immigrants from Eastern Europe have settled. “They say they will give me work, but then they don’t answer my phone calls. They tell a lot of lies,” said Mr. Hristov.

            After living with his sister for several weeks, the family found an inexpensive apartment with help from an unlikely ally. The couple’s two sons had begun participating in an after school program in the Salem Gemeinde United Methodist Church in Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood. It focuses on children from Roma and other vulnerable families, and encourages interfaith cooperation and understanding in an ethnically and religiously diverse neighborhood. When the program’s director, Ann-Christin Puchta, learned of the family’s situation, she helped them find an apartment they could afford.

            The family is Muslim, but appreciates the assistance they got from the United Methodist program. “We went to the Turks and the Muslims and no one offered any help. We’ve received a lot from the church, including food and help with our boys. The church is important for us, and we’d like to help it, but we don’t have any money,” Mr. Hristov said.

“Weren’t accepted as victims”

            For Roma families like Mr. Hristov’s which have fled increasing discrimination in countries like Bulgaria and Romania, Germany was supposed to be the land of opportunity. Yet the country’s long history of mistreating the Roma hasn’t come to an end, nor has it been adequately discussed, despite the dedication last October of a memorial in Berlin to the hundreds of thousands of Roma who were killed by Germany and its allies between 1933 and 1945. The dedication came almost seven decades after the end of World War II and years after the dedication of memorials to Jews and homosexuals murdered by the Nazis.

            “During National Socialism, the persecution of the Roma was very strong, and only a small percentage of Roma and Sinti people in Germany and Eastern Europe survived the Holocaust,” Ms. Puchta said. “The Jewish people were recognized as victims, but the Roma and Sinti weren’t accepted as victims for a long time, because people said the Jews went to the concentration camps because of their religion, while the Roma were there because of stealing and not belonging to society. They deserved it. It was clear that Roma do things wrong, so it was OK to send them to the camps and kill them. This attitude ran very deep within society, but also with government officials. So it wasn’t possible for the Roma to receive any compensation for what they had suffered. Jewish people could get things like that, not enough of course, and I don’t blame Jewish people for that, but the Roma people got almost nothing.”

            Negative stereotypes of Roma date back centuries, and even though they had full citizenship rights under the Weimar Constitution (1919-1933), they were eventually subject to laws for “Combating Gypsies, Vagabonds, and the Work-shy.” Hitler pejoratively labeled them Zigeuner, from the Greek “untouchable,” an epithet that persists to this day. Such contempt laid the foundation for their murder during the Third Reich.

            After the fall of the Nazis, Roma returned to Berlin as post-war guest workers. When the Iron Curtain fell, thousands of Roma fled the Bosnian War for Berlin. Most stayed, despite repeated calls for mass deportation and racist attitudes that lingered long after Hitler.

            “For many decades, the police still used the writings of the Nazis against the Roma,” Ms. Puchta said. “They would say that if you were accused of something in 1945, you are still guilty today. That’s one reason why Roma and Sinti people still distrust everything that comes from the officials.”

            In recent years, especially since Romania and Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007, which gave many Roma the right to move–but not to work–anywhere within the EU, public disdain for the Roma, encouraged by some right-wing parties, has increased. Many Roma newcomers are looking for housing, but a group called Pro Deutschland, an anti-Muslim party with ties to neo-Nazi and other extremist groups, discouraged Berlin landlords from renting to Roma by passing out leaflets claiming the Roma had only come to the city to plunder the social welfare system. Yet right-wing crazies weren’t the only ones calling for the expulsion of the Roma. The liberal Der Spiegel magazine and television program featured an “investigation” of Berlin apartment blocks overrun by Roma who allegedly live on welfare benefits while trashing their housing.

            Ms. Puchta admits living conditions for the Roma are less than optimal, but she says their legal limbo is often to blame. “Because of the special laws for European Union citizens, most of them have horrible living conditions. They are some who have managed quite well, but others live 20 people to a room and look for food in the garbage because they have no money. They can work in the black market for 2 Euros an hour, but sometimes at the end of the month they won’t even get that because it’s illegal work and their boss just throws them out on the street,” she said.

            Women immigrants in Berlin often have an easier time finding employment than their male counterparts, usually in such traditionally low-paid jobs as cleaning offices and homes. That can create tension within a patriarchal culture such as the Roma. Ms. Puchta says that as women spend more hours out of the home in work settings, the family will often pull her back because it feels they can no longer control her. And she has few options apart from the family. “The women need their families, because if she gets ill, who is going to care for her children? Not us. If she loses her job, she has no right within the EU for assistance from the state, so who will care for her? Not us. So it’s cheap for us to tell a woman that she can do it on her own, because when she’s in danger she will need her family, as we’re not going to help her,” Ms. Puchta said.

A safe place for kids

            Neukölln is ground zero for Roma immigration to Berlin, and the church’s Kindertreff–a “children’s meeting place”–is located at its heart. The program began a decade ago as a push to keep immigrant children from falling behind in school.

            “Although many of them have been living here for years, the Roma and other families in Neukölln are still seen by German society as outsiders. As a result, the kids don’t always receive the education they need, and with parents who may not speak German, they often fall behind in schoolwork. The Kindertreff helps them keep up in school,” said Michelle Dromgold, a United Methodist mission intern who worked with the program.

            Beyond homework, the Kindertreff offers other educational opportunities as well as time for play. It’s a safe place away from home, where kids can get to know each other apart from the strictly-defined social distinctions imposed by the dominant culture. But that’s not easy.

            “The prejudice against the so-called Gypsies is very big. If I ask Palestinian, Turkish or German children about the Roma, they say they stink, they are thieves, they look for food in the garbage cans, they are beggars and dirty and horrible. They say they don’t want anything to do with them. They will say that even if their best friend is Roma and sitting beside them. They don’t get the connection. That picture of Gypsies runs deep in the people, and it’s very difficult to combat it,” said Ms. Puchta.

            “We try to fight this prejudice by creating a shelter here. Because a child with a Roma background, if others know she or he is Roma, is not safe on the streets. Many Roma parents know their children won’t be safe on the streets and could be beaten up. We try to convince the parents that their children will be safe with us. We will defend them in case of trouble. If there’s trouble on the streets we just don’t let them go by themselves but walk them to the door of their flat. We want them to know that here they are safe, they are welcomed.”

            It takes hard work to break down the prejudice. “We don’t allow children to say dirty things about the Roma and Gypsies. That means talking, talking, talking, to break down these prejudices. We do workshops where we talk about prejudices, especially against the Roma. We accompany children to their teachers if there’s a problem,” Ms. Puchta said.

            “Our groups bring children together. In our music group they are Arab and Turkish and German and Roma children. On our football team, Arab and Roma children play together. When we cook they are together. But it’s a long struggle. The most difficult thing for me is that I can’t say, ‘You say bad things about Gypsies, but look at your friend, he’s also a Gypsy.’ I can’t do that. It would be a kind of denunciation. If a child doesn’t say they are Roma, I’m not allowed to say whether they are or not. It’s the decision of each child if they want to be known as a Gypsy or not. So I have to close my mouth. And it’s difficult to fight prejudice with your mouth closed.”

            Whatever the tensions around identity in Berlin, most Roma feel it’s better than what they left behind when they immigrated to Germany.

            “Teachers in Bulgaria say it’s better that Roma kids don’t come to school, so they won’t disturb the other students,” said Mariela Nikolova, a social worker with Amaro Drom, a Berlin-based organization working to empower Roma youth. “Because of the teachers’ attitude, many Roma parents don’t send their kids to school. Yet there’s always some who do, and so there are one or two Roma kids in a class and they get harassed by the other kids. That’s why so many people coming from Bulgaria don’t self-identify as Roma. Instead they call themselves Bulgarians or Turkish-speaking Bulgarians, just as here in Germany we have this emerging group of German Turks.”

“Don’t want their families to get in trouble”

            The church program pays special attention to Roma girls. Though Ms. Puchta notes the differences between Sinti families that have been resident in Germany for centuries and Roma families recently arrived from Bulgaria and Romania, she says early marriage is a problem in both groups.

            ‘We see arranged and forced marriages of girls as young as 13 years old. The distrust of the government is so great, that even if girls don’t want to marry, they won’t dare ask for help because they don’t want their family to get in trouble. They know that if they tell the state, they will come and take away the whole family and everything will be horrible,” Ms. Puchta said.

            “So instead of asking for help, the girl will slip away into the shadows, and two years later I hear that she got married. They don’t tell me because they’re afraid I’ll tell the youth officials, which I wouldn’t do. I tell them I wouldn’t do it, I’d only do what they ask, not asking if it’s legal or not. But if they accept being married, I wouldn’t say anything, my lips would be sealed, because it’s very hard for them to find people who won’t betray them. And then later on, if there’s something wrong in the marriage, we can be there to help them. I have to work here for ten more years for these girls to trust me. They must be sure that I won’t betray them if they tell me about things like that.”

            Many of the children in the Kindertreff come from Muslim families, yet within the church building their religious identity is just one more element in a rich multicultural mix. And Ms. Dromgold, the mission intern, said their presence is a sign of the program’s vitality.

            “Many of the Muslim families feel like outcasts from traditional Christian and Jewish German society. So often Muslim families will have a negative view of the church,” she said. “Yet within this neighborhood, I’ll commonly meet children on the street and they’ll refer to the whole Kindertreff project as ‘the church.’ That means that through the work we do, we’re presenting a positive image of what it means to be Christian and what it means to be the church. Through working with these families and providing an opportunity for their children to come to the church, but not giving them food that is not halal (food that’s allowed for Muslims to eat), they know they can trust us. Those personal relationships are the beginning of trust, dialogue and bridge building between people of different religions and customs.”

Paul Jeffrey is a United Methodist missionary and senior correspondent for response.