Want to see refugee suffering in 30 seconds or less? Watch the news. Want to feel their pain and understand how one host nation justifies its action? Read Hello Refugees!(Gefen Publishing, 2017).By sticking assiduously to his successful formula best selling author Tuvia Tenenbom writes another masterpiece of non-fiction in an engrossing diary format.
Tenenbom
is an affable, funny, interlocutor. He spotlights sores of the human condition
and the humbuggery of official responses. He employs a playful amusing
storytelling telling technique and playwright skills that leave the reader
believing this is a personal diary more than a fact-filled telling of truths
about the unfolding refugee crisis stewing in Germany. Tenenbom’s innate
skepticism and intuition make him one of today’s most insightful modern social
and political anthropologists.
Tenenbomtells the pain and suffering of men,
women, and children, old and young, from Africa to Afghanistan who make their
harrowing journeys to Germany. Some are criminals,sheistersand arrogant. Most are honest, simple
people seeking refuge from violence back home. German racists and nationalists
repeatedly lump migrants and refugees together to justify caging everyone,
isolating them, guarding them by well-armed security forces and deporting them
if only the exhausted German government had a place to ship them. Niggling at
Tenenbom is the feeling Germans want to help refugees to show the rest of the
world the Holocaust was an anomaly, a misstep, and glitch in time and
culture.
In
other books, Tenenbom takes the most unsettling issues exposing them in a
laugh-out-loud style. This is not that book. There is nothing funny about
refugees, their living conditions, and the vainglorious and smarmy attitudes of
officials responsible for the new lives of refugees. We are struck how
ill-prepared are the Germans who live and die on their reputation for
punctuality and organization to effectively manage livable accommodations let
alone acculturate and assimilate refugees.
Tenenbom
drives through Germany. He worms his way into refugee camps, transit
hotels, and other placement accommodations. He speaks Arabic, wrangles invites
to eat their food, drink their thick, strong Arabic coffee, and gets them to
share their stories. Germany offers the best welfare support in all of Europe
and has the most beautiful blonds—men and women. Speaking fluent German,
he uses similar means to speak almost leisurely with Germans who fear and
resent the “newcomers.”
Tenenbom
gets everybody to talk about Israel and Jews. Some have good things to say.
Others, host-migrant-refugee, are trapped in a tenacious web spun by the
international Jews and mini-Nazi State of Israel (page 139).
Doing for the refugees is the new German public image until Tenenbom enters “the freakiest place on the planet (page 55)!” Refugee housing units are “boxes, made of lousy materials…housing up to ten people, and sheets serve as doors. If you want privacy, my dear, go back to where you came from.” The Germans are great for security. “Strangers and journalists are never to enter,” but Tenenbom wiggles around these formidable restrictions. Camps house people together who are educated and once middle-class alongside knife fighting, alcoholic tribesmen from violent and rural countries. Women and children are particularly vulnerable. Filthy public toilets subject refugees to health problems and skin diseases. The food is unfamiliar and often violates their religious precepts. It universally tastes horrible. The boredom, lack of work, skills training, education, or teaching them to speak German, doom refugees “to mental and spiritual death.YesGermany might have saved their bodies, but it is killing their souls (page 105).” Nevertheless, there are “guests” who appreciate Germany. “Thawanni, a person with a million watts of warmth, is happy to introduce me to the residents of the place, and she seems to enjoy her new job as a hostess...Here, for example, is a couple from Iraq. ‘Just today,’ the man tells me,’ a missile fell next to my brother…in Mosul, where Daesh controls everything.’ His wife chips in: ‘I love Germany. Only Germany helps us. Angela Merkel is the best. Germans are the best. They take us in; they house us, they feed us, they give us money. May Allah bless Germany. No other country is as good as Germany. Not even one Arab country took us in!” Hello Refugees!exemplifies Mark Twain’s assessment, “The mere knowledge of a fact is pale; but when you come to realize a fact, it takes on color. It is all the difference of hearing of a man being stabbed to the heart, and seeing it done.” REVIEWER BIO: Dr. Harold Goldmeier is a public speaker, Managing Partner of an investment firm, a consultant to firms in commerce and industry, and a writer. He teaches Values & Ethics to international university students in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Goldmeier is a recipient of the Governor’s Award (Illinois) for family investment programs in the workplace from the Com. on the Status of Women. He was a Research and Teaching Fellow at Harvard, a father and grandfather of very independent-minded children.
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