Germany hosts just over a million Ukrainian refugees. Some 68,000 are registered in the German capital, Berlin, where their accommodation is causing difficulties. The number of asylum seekers from other countries has increased significantly in parallel. A reception center hastily set up last year on the site of the former Tegel airport was only to accommodate Ukrainian refugees for three days. Today, 3,000 of them stay there for an average of three months in tents and in a former terminal, living in difficult conditions.
With our correspondent in Berlin, Pascal Thibault
” There are too many people living here. There are a lot of sick people. We are stressed, depressed. Best to get out of here and go for a walk. » Jewgeni arrived in Berlin just before the start of the war to look for work. He first lived with a German, but he could not stay at home.
For three months, he has been living with 3,000 other Ukrainians, with his wife and four children, in one of the giant tents set up on the site of the former Tegel airport. This reception center was originally designed for a 72-hour stay before moving to or moving elsewhere in Germany.
Today, refugees spend an average of three months there. Finding accommodation in Berlin is very difficult. The 30,000 reception places of the municipality are not enough.
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Lots of return requests
” Civil society is less mobilized. There are fewer Ukrainians in private care. Those who welcomed them in March 2022 didn’t think they would stay that long says Carina Harms, who heads the city’s migration office.
Some 800 children reside in these giant tents and an old terminal. The Red Cross, which manages the site, strives to improve accommodation conditions and the organization of leisure activities. A bus connects the former airport to the central station. ” Many want to return to their country, says Kleopatra Tümmler, director of the reception center in Tegel. But we have to motivate them so that they integrate, so that the situation remains bearable for them. »
Sixty-eight thousand Ukrainian refugees are registered in the German capital, to which are added 1,500 new arrivals every month.