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Scenes at Berlin Hauptbahnhof Breaking Down Barriers
CLOCKWISE: Max in his orange volunteer vest, displaying the Ukrainian flag. Refugees’ arrival floor at Berlin Hauptbahnhof. A van that had carried refugees from Ukraine to Berlin, marked in Russian for “children.”
A Notre Dame Student’s Experience with Ukrainian Refugees in Germany
BY MAX CHUMA ’22
Max Chuma ’22, graduated with a major in business analytics and a supplementary major in global affairs, with a concentration in transnational European studies, and a minor in Italian. During spring break 2022, he traveled to Germany as part of a Nanovic Institute experiential learning course on the migration crisis, led by William Collins Donahue, Cavanaugh Professor of the Humanities. At the end of his week, Max went to Berlin’s central train station to help receive refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine. All four of my grandparents fled Ukraine to escape political and cultural persecution by Nazi Germany and the USSR. Their story has been at the core of my identity as a native Ukrainian speaker and proud Ukrainian American.
Motivated by my family’s refugee history, I spent the summer after my freshman year at Notre Dame in the Center for Social Concerns’ Summer Service Learning Program at the U.S.-Mexico Border in El Paso. I left with a new perspective on the mass migrations that we are witnessing all over the globe today. To continue learning, I jumped on the opportunity to travel to Berlin with the spring 2022 Nanovic course on migration and Germany, with the expectation that I would be mainly learning about how Germany has accepted and integrated refugees from North Africa.
I would have never guessed that two weeks before our departure, Russia would invade my ancestral homeland of Ukraine and spark a new wave of refugees, the pace and enormity of which has not been seen since the period when my grandparents fled Ukraine almost eighty years ago. I would also have never predicted that on the final day of our Berlin migration class trip I would see my grandparents’ tragic story repeat itself before my eyes.
This last day of the class trip had been reserved for us to experience Germany as tourists, but I knew that there was a great need at Berlin Hauptbahnhof, the central station: multiple evacuation trains from Poland were arriving each day in Berlin full of Ukrainian women and children. My sense of motivation to go to the central station was reinforced when I left the hotel and saw a blue Ukrainian van with “дети,” meaning “children” in Russian, in bold duct tape letters all around the sides, a plea to Russian troops not to attack during the escape.
With my backpack filled with as much food and water as I could carry, I arrived alone, at the station. An entire floor was dedicated to Ukrainian refugees. After I donated my food, I joined a line to register as a volunteer.
The volunteers were separated into German/English speakers and then Ukrainian/Russian speakers. As a native Ukrainian speaker, I was given a special orange vest and told to display my name – which I did in the Cyrillic Mаксим – and the languages I spoke. The volunteers ranged from local teenagers to retired couples and some had been there for several days. Sadly, I think many had an advantage over me in that they had become somewhat numb to the tragedy and trauma of the situation. I was shocked by how many young innocent faces I saw coming into the reception area. I called my own mother in tears, telling her over and over again, “They are just kids Mama. There are so many scared little kids.” She told me they were safe, and that all I had to do was to show them love, and to think of those who helped my grandparents.
German groups had set up tents for medical care for mothers or disability support, but, from my perspective, there was no formal leadership. Volunteers would just go to where there was a need or simply stand in place and answer questions for the anxious refugees. Most of their requests were for needs that were immediate and simple, such as coffee in the morning or toiletries in the evening, and guidance as the refugees began to formulate plans for where they would be spending the night in Germany. I was pulled in nearly every direction, from explaining how to purchase tickets to other European cities, to consoling an anxious grandmother, to handing out food, to carrying children to the train. I met a little boy who, stunned and emotionless, whispered that his name was “Sasha.” When I told him my name was Max his mother told me that was the name of his father, who I could only assume had been required to remain in Ukraine and defend the homeland. I worked for approximately five hours in total and the stream of women and children did not stop. In my last hour, the other Notre Dame students joined me and I helped them distribute fruit, candy, and toiletries we had purchased from the train station’s grocery store.
When I got tired or overwhelmed I kept returning because I wanted to be a source of good like those who had helped my grandparents, child refugees of the 1940s. I kept thinking about a story my grandfather told me about his first memory when he and his sister arrived by boat at the Ellis Island immigration processing center in New York. A stranger gave them an orange that they ate in secret. He had never tasted anything so sweet, and, to this day, it remains his first memory of the Western, free world.
As a full circle and to honor my grandparents’ bravery, even as small children, I bought oranges and passed them out to the Ukrainian children. I wanted the young, terrified faces before me to know they were welcome and that the evil they were fleeing would not find them in Berlin. As my cousin fights for his country’s freedom in Kyiv with the Ukrainian army, the least I can do is tell traumatized women and children, waiting with uncertainty in a cold, foreign train station, that there is hope. ◆
