Roman Friedrich works to inform the community in the Chorweiler district of Cologne. He organizes aid for Ukrainian refugees arriving in the city, but at the same time, he constantly has an ear for those accused of Putin’s war: the Russian community in Germany.
“What shocked me the most was when an elementary school teacher asked a Russian child to stand up in front of the whole class and clearly take a stand and distance himself from Putin’s policies,” Friedrich said.
The social worker, who was born in Omsk, Russia and whose grandmother is from Ukraine, has received many calls in recent days with similar stories of hostility: A Russian boy in a high school in Cologne was held and beaten by his classmates. A Polish woman misunderstood a Russian woman and was harassed in a hardware store. Every day, people say that they suffer in the workplace, on public transport, in the school yard.
“This is not yet a widespread trend,” says Friedrich, “but the number of cases is growing. And Russian propaganda captures such references by appropriating them for its own purposes and inventing additional stories.
New position
It is estimated that six million Russian-speakers live in Germany. The majority are German nationals: Germans from the former Soviet Union – largely from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. They are descendants of settlers from German-speaking Central Europe, who moved to various parts of the Russian Empire from the second half of the 18th century. Resettlement in West Germany began in the 1950s, but two million of them came to Germany in the 1990s.
They tend to hold conservative family values. In recent years, the “Russian-Germans” have attracted the attention of the media when it was revealed that a large number of them supported the far-right nationalist populists of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Thus, before the war began, the Russians became supporters of the AfD. now they are considered Putin sympathizers, says Friedrich. “The result is that they feel victimized and further isolated,” he fears.
Roman Friedrich speaks fluent Russian and Ukrainian. He says he was just talking to the owner of a supermarket who was asking for his advice. Following a raid on a Russian-Polish store in the town of Oberhausen, where windows were smashed and everything smeared with defamatory graffiti, many shopkeepers are undecided on whether to better remove their Russian products from the shelves.
In response to a DW inquiry, Mix markets, a chain of around 330 stores across Europe, announced that it would no longer offer food made in Russia: “Our Pelmeni pasta is produced in Nuremberg, ‘Tworog’ (Slavic cheese “Sgushenka” is produced in the Netherlands, “Rjazhenka” is made in Lithuania, “Russian” sausages are made in Bavaria, beer is made by the Danish brewer Anlsuser or Carlsher “Pastries and sweets are produced in Ukraine.”
Roman Friedrich calls on German politicians to protect the Russian community as the mood warms. “When there is incitement to violence, the prosecutor’s office must act quickly. Not all Russians can be held responsible for Moscow’s actions. The rule of law must be applied, society must actively and decisively fight against such developments.”
Targeting children
Narina Karitzky is the director of the Russian School in the nearby city of Bonn, which she founded in 2011. At first, it was a small project to teach Russian students. Today, it serves 500 families and their children, while its 25 teachers also teach art, ballet and even robotics.
“The other day my colleague got a call from a gentleman living near the school who said we were ashamed all the way. ‘You killers,'” he shouted on the phone.
Karitzky has also heard many stories of children and young people being harassed on the street. Adults shouting at children on the bus because they speak Russian. Teachers who demand that their students take a clear stand against Putin. And from many parents who, after the Oberhausen attack, ask if they could send their children to Russian school. “They are afraid that something will happen to their children,” he says.
Many of her students are not actually from Russia, but from other Russian-speaking countries of the former Soviet Union. When the war broke out, Narina Karitzky, a Russian woman of Armenian descent, received correspondence from a Ukrainian mother.
“She wrote to me that they are so happy that their children are registered here, but she asked: what do you think about the invasion? Are you for or against it? For her, it was important how we felt about it. Russian-speaking, you are ashamed, even if you can not you avoid it “.
The head of the Russian school came out and took a clear position condemning the attack as a violation of international law. He even wrote a letter to the mayor of Bonn.
So Nina Karitzky was very surprised when she received the cancellation of her school’s scheduled show, which was scheduled to take place at a city museum in May.
“We are withdrawing the offer for political reasons”, was the short message. That hurt a lot, says Karitzky.
Meanwhile, the museum, which has been cooperating with the Russian School for many years, stepped back and apologized to Narina Karitzky. This is a very good example of what goes wrong between Germans, Russians and people from the CIS countries. Narina Karitzky’s appeal:
“People have to distinguish between an aggressive war on the one hand and families living peacefully in Germany that have nothing to do with it. This war is being waged in the name of the people, but we say very clearly: This is Putin’s war. “What is happening now is not Russia.”
This article was originally written in German.
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