Only contemporaries can remember. All the other people learn from history by hearsay. Just seventy years ago Germany lay in ruins. Humans were uprooted and on the run and frequently without belongings, the same way as nowadays in Syria (look at rubble women of Berlin on the left and on the right a street in Syria in the following scribble). Many of today’s later born are descended from such fates. Nevertheless, it appears that some of those lost their common sense and history. With a lack of sympathy for today’s refugees, it is maybe necessary to bring the situation of a refugee to mind.

We are not aware in these days that our daily life is determined by routines that achieved the current state due to decades free of war. Without an intact infrastructure that provides the society functioning traffic, health, supply and disposal systems, energy and telecommunications as well as without a smooth administration, we also would be back in the Dark Ages. This would imply

• No means of public transportation,
• In the absence of fuel private transport would be limited to bicycles and walks,
• Medical care would lack of supplies, as soon as the medicines are depleted,
• Doctors would no longer be attainable,
• Running water would be rationed at best and given at fitting water stations,
• dysfunctional toilets would result in diseases and epidemics,
• on all streets would be lying stinking, morbid garbage,
• electricity-depending devices and services, like refrigerators, stoves, light, television would be no longer available,
• the telephone systems would go belly up,
• Authorities and banks would not function any longer in shortest time

In such a situation we have no access to our properties and documents stored in computers, which we collect in an organized society in the course of our life – bank counters do not provide cash, no more cashless payment, no public services, no access to stored data. If additionally fires break out and destroy the inventory of personal documents, then all you have is what you can bear and actually carry with yourself.

Certainly all populists, who require refugees to have all their papers on themselves, have a fireproof box with all their passports, birth certificates, school reports, any kind of other certificates, work proofs, pension proofs and with enough cash prepared, for the worst case. And of course they would protect their family and above all their box, when they are escaping on foot.

In which spheres are politicians, who ask refugees, who escaped from the disaster described above, that they are able to prove their identity and vocational qualifications. Is it thoughtlessness, missing sympathy or simply fatuity?

Bottom line: In the absence of sympathy it is necessary to be aware that an escape is not a package tour that one booked at a smuggler organization with a guarantee to receive the desired support in the target country. A look at Syria shows that no stone rests on another. At the same time different parties maraud through the ruins. Who would not run away, as far as the feet will carry? The uncertainty of an escape is always better than awaiting to be killed.