Hello there.

I’m Paul, 16 years old, I was born and I still live in Germany. The city I live in is called Hamburg, we provide a home to over 70.000 refugees.

This story starts on a cold winter day, the 23rd January 2016, at almost exactly midnight.

I just finished playing some video games outside of the real world, far away from any problems. I started talking to a user I just met, we began chatting about my country, Germany it’s peculiarities

After telling him some facts about the german language, I wrote the sentence that started a chat which wouldn’t leave my mind for weeks.

I’m so sorry for all the refugees coming to Germany that have to learn all this

The sentence is so innocent, and yet lead to the two hours of my live that probably had me thinking the most I had ever thought in my 16 years of living on this planet.

My chat partner began asking how I felt about all this.

I think it’s our.. mission to help them, but it’s not fair that everyone is coming to Germany, the other countries should take some aswell.

The answer I chose was one of the rather standard ones, it is the opinion that the mainstream politics have, and as a back then 15 year old boy, it sounded about right.

But then it started bothering me. Two minutes later, I came up with

With every refugee coming, it get’s slightly worse for the other refugees because they are so many

To clarify, many refugee camps are not that far away from my home, and I could see how they live, in tents, without a real home.

We can’t do that to them…

… but we are slowly running out of space. As my partner correctly exclaimed:

It’s a very unfortunate situation

The word unfortunate got me thinking. Unfortunate.. is it unfortunate for me, in any way?

So I came up with a very controversial thought. I in fact found something that I don’t like… My partner didn’t seem to enjoy the refugees at all, so I wanted to sound like a cool guy and answer something that fits his mindset.

Some of them dont accept how we live here in Germany. We don’t put women lower than men, but in the countries they come from it’s done like that

About eight months later, I start to agree with what I said. There are indeed some that do not try to integrate or live the german way of life.

But is that truly their fault, or did they just have complete wrong expectations of Germany? Might be both. It is hard to tell, because every single refugee is different.

My personal opinion still is, that they have to try getting a bit more german at least.

On the other hand, they are forced to come here, and we expect them to leave their culture behind because of a war that is completely unrelated to them?

As you see, this is why I could not stop thinking. There are tons of questions, and close to no answers at all.

What if they do illegal stuff?

Is another question that appeared on my computer screen. What do we do? I asked myself. I looked in my brain, desperate to find the answer. Soon I realized, that it is always ending bad for one side.

We can’t send them back, because they have war in their country, but if they get put in a jail, we actually have to pay for them doing crimes.

This is where I got to see how thin the line is.

I already read this thought, my brain told me.

Turns out, I did. A national socialist party hangs out posters, advertising to send non germans back to their country if they are criminals.

I did not want to be a nazi, they are bad, I learned all my life. And they still are, this scared me. I felt like a insanely cruel person.

It’s so hard to stay calm and force yourself to not judge all of them because some are stupid

In retroperspective, I’m proud that I managed to stick to my opinion.

Not every refugee is a bad person. Most of them are not. Almost all of them are not.

Unforunately, there are some terrorists and criminals hiding unter the refugee title.

“There are also a lot of german criminals and terrorists. That doesn’t make me hate germans”, I thought. So refugees probably aren’t that bad after all, are they?

We have to help the 99% of good guys, but how do we prevent the 1% of assholes from getting in?

We can’t. There are to many.

After realizing this, the 25% a right-wing party got in a local election doesn’t seem that 1936.

I do think that everyone who votes for this party is a “bad guy” aswell though.

It is not okay to let 99% of people that are fleeing from their death behind, just to let our modern world exist like it is.

The one percent might try to destroy our society, but after all, saving 99% is way more important than our standard of living.

A lot of teachers and politicians tell us children that we shouldn’t be proud of Germany.

I am proud. We’re actually helping so many foreign people, we’re doing the most anti-nazi thing I could imagine.

This is how I think now. My personality evolved a lot since the chat this all is about. There is one thing that is still bothering me, after all these months.

Is that all fair? what have you done for being on this side of the story?

This one thought fucked me up deep inside.

I’m born in Germany, I can live a good life. Basically, I could’ve been born everywhere on this planet, but I somehow did end up here.

I did nothing to achieve this. Isn’t it damn unfair that they have to be in a war zone, give up their lives, their families, their culture… just because they were born in the wrong country?

I’d like to end my little story here, the urge to express my thoughts somewhere got stronger everyday since my little chat.

I hope that this article might inspire some people, we have little power in this world, but after all…

…It is definitely not the refugee’s fault that they have to come to europe.

Help to make the world a bit less unfair. Support refugees.

Thank you.