He said he, like many others, had been seduced by the promise of an easy life in Europe.

“Everyone wants to drive a big car, a Mercedes, and eat fat sausages.” he said. “But I was not used to big sausages. Life there was comfortable but I could not get used to it.

“The human needs very little to be satisfied,” he added. “As my mother used to say: ‘To be satisfied you need very little and who is satisfied is a king.’ People never have enough of everything. You have to be happy where you live. If there is no war there, what more do you want?”

“Germany is not our country,” he said. “Our country is here where we were born, this is my home. Here I grew old.”