The first 48 hours

When did the help for arriving refugees from Ukraine start?

HBF

27th (or 28th?) february evening, meeting train EC40 from Warsaw scheduled for approimately 2216

These are only fragments of what I have been told and might be covered in more detail by the others mentioned: traveled to the border by car (3 day trip?) the first people on site wanted to hand out little welcome paper bags and were shocked to find out that no official organisation or institution had even begun to think about the situation or prepare for it.

SÜDKREUZ

25th or 26th of Feb

ZOB

March 1st at 2AM

Describe the general situation of arriving refugees at the station before support for arriving refugees started.

HBF

I am not aware of any refugees at the station before our support arrived. Although I epect there were some there – not in any visible numbers.

SÜDKREUZ

When I arrived at 2am on the 26th, there was no coordination. There was only an Edeka Cart that volunteers replenished and water. We were standing on the streets.

ZOB

Mein erster Einsatz als Volontärin war am 28.02.2022, ich fuhr abends zum Berlin HBF und half dort den UkrainerInnen, die aus den Zügen ausstiegen. An dem Tag war dort noch keine Hilfe vor Ort außer mir und noch einer jungen Volontärin.

Someone arrived at Hbf first and sent a few volunteers to ZOB to check if there are buses with refugees; after it was confirmed, the project started.

What were the first steps taken?

HBF

I saw a social media post (likely facebook or telegram) stating that a group would be going to Hauptbahnhof to meet refugees. I was not part of the group that organised this happening. We waited on the platform for the train to arrive with several boes of food to give out. Many people came to the station to offer accomodation, and rides to accomodation. Online, we established a telegram group to coordinate accomodation/rides that were not offered in person. When the train arrived, first we worked on the platform, and then at the request of the bundespolizei/station staff, one level down on level OG1, to accommodate people. We paired each group with an accomodation host and a driver. My primary role at this time ended up being coordinating accomodation hosts and drivers in the telegram group, to match with refugees waiting for help with us in OG1. This role arose ad-hoc (perhaps from me paying attention to the telegram groups and not being able to communicate in Russian or Ukrainian directly with refugees at the hauptbahnhof). This continued until around 0300 when everyone had been accomodated.

Opening of different Telegram groups (the eact order is something would know about). The first Telegram group I joined was the big non-station-specific group. When I joined it on Monday morning (28.02.) I immediately reached out to one of the administrators () to ask if I could help remotely, as I wasn’t back in Berlin yet. The group seemed chaotic and incredibly fast. had a brief phone call with me, eplaining the needs around updating group members on the arriving trains and buses. in the following 24-48 hours I started developing a process of manually reading out the data from different sources (DB page, flibus page etc), trying to find more accurate, better structured ones and trying to optimize the process while feeding the TRAIN/BUS ARRIVALS channel as close to 24/7 as possible.

Aufbau von Supportstrukturen vor Ort (Direktion/Koordination von Volunteers, Aufbau von mehreren Foodstations (ab 3.3 eine große Foodstation), Koordination von ankommenden Donations (ab 3.3 zusammengelegt mit der Foodstation), Supportsstrukturen für LGBTQIA, Supportstrukturen für BIPOC-Geflüchtete, Supportstrukturen für Menschen mit Tieren, Kinderstation, „Ruheort“ für Stillende, Supportstrukturen für „Ghostbusses“, Aufbau eines Infodesks, medizinische Hilfe, ab ca Mitte März psychische Hilfe, Hygienestation, Kleiderstation

SÜDKREUZ

On site: We just waited for people in front of the buses. When they arrived we offered them water, and advise for going on the trains or on further busses. I asked on the 25th where I can go to help. There was no information as to what to do. The only platform that was used was the volunteer sign up list.

ZOB

–

The first two weeks

Describe the general situation of arriving refugees at the station after support for arriving refugees started.

HBF

There were a lot of volunteers and other people at the station to offer support for arriving refugees. We were, in fact, overwhelmed at one point by volunteers and one of my roles was to tell arriving volunteers that we could not use their help and they should return in a few weeks when the situation was not so much in the news. This was (as far as I can tell) caused by television news stories showing volunteers converging on Hauptbahnhof to help. Facilities included: free food and drink, free onward train tickets and onward bus journeys, an information desk, childrens corner, pets, initially, accomodation coordination with volunteer hosts (this was then replaced at some point, I cannot remember eactly when, with government provided accomodation)

Die Supportstrukturen sind mit der Anzahl der ankommenden Geflüchteten gewachsen. Als Teil des Orgateams der Foodstation(Wir waren zu dritt und haben uns im Schichtbetreib organisiert) kann ich über die ersten Wochen nur was zum Ablauf der Foodstation/Donationannahme/Verteilung von Donations an die Hygienestation etwas sagen, für alles anderere hatte ich keine Zeit bzw ich habe es nur am Rande mitbekommen.
Grundsätzlich war es super chaotisch durch die oft unkalkulierbaren „Massen“ an Menschen, die täglich angekommen sind. Aufgrund von Kälte und oft spät ankommender Geflüchteter war die Foodsation im 24/7 Betrieb bis zum 17.03.2022, wir haben täglich mit ca 30.000 Portionen Essen und Getränken gerechnet, was im Regelfall auch notwendig war. Diese wurden zusammengestellt durch vor allem Privatspenden, privat organisierte Großmengen an fertig gekochten Speisen durch Restaurants, geschmierte Brote/Lunchpakete vom DLRG, den Johannitern etc, aber auch privat organisierte Großspenden von Firmen. Im Anschluss daran hat ein Catering die Versorgung übernommen, allerdings vor allem am Anfang mit einigen Schwierigkeiten, z.B der Kalkulation von genug Essen.
An die Foodstation war auch die Donationannahme angegliedert, von dort aus wurde die Hygienestation sowie kurzzeitig eine weitere Lebensmittelausgabestation versorgt.

At the beginning. The first days after the invasion I spent all of my time at demonstrations and that didn’t feel like enough. And then I actually messaged Vitsche because they were calling for volunteers and they said that there was a sign-up sheet and I could sign up and then they would get back to me. And I didn’t have patience for that because I was so on edge that I didn’t want to wait for somebody to call me back from a sign-up sheet for volunteering. But then I found this Telegram group, it wasn’t called Berlin Arrival Support, it was called Ukraine Berlin Arrivals or something. And they said that I could just come, and should bring a vest. And also on my second day I signed up to be a coordinator. I didn’t know what that meant, I just did it. And then when I showed up I. was there and she was a coordinator and I asked her: ‘So you are a coordinator, what does a coordinator do?’ And she said ‘I don’t know, you do this, try to keep an eye on things’. And I was like okay. And that’s how it started. I came with a friend and he bought two vests in a 99 cent store. They were orange, so we brought two orange vests. And then I did two days at Hauptbahnhof and I did a day at Akuts, which was horrible and I never went back there. Horrible for several reasons, because of the way they treated the refugees, they had to stand outside in line in the cold because the building was full. They had one building for Ukrainians but it was full straight away and then people were standing for hours in the cold. Eventually they put them all into buses and shuffled them around and they left for other cities. And then the ones who were left in the evening spent a whole day there. It was I don’t know 4 pm or 6 pm. The only ones that were left there were POC men standing out there in the cold. POC men were the ones that no one could find a solution for. And also the way they treated volunteers because there was a social worker who was like the boss of everything but she wasn’t very nice and she just sort of was a little bit dismissive being like do this do that. And then we had to knock on people’s doors and tell them to pack their stuff. I was with two Ukrainian girls actually volunteering as well, the ones who were in Berlin already longer, and then we were knocking on those doors and she said that it was like a concentration camp, people were sleeping and you were waking them and telling them to pack up and leave. And so I never went back to AKUZ. Refugees and volunteers at Hauptbahnhof on March 1st, so like the 4th day, were already downstairs in UG1 where everything would happen later because before they were a little bit further up, that’s what I was told. At first they were on the platform, and they were somewhere on the ground level or something and then they moved to UG1. So when I came they were already there. And we were just hanging around, waiting for the net train, and the first info sheets started popping up plastered around just this glass cube with information on how to get to AKUZ etc. I remember that at some point there was a fied team of coordinators. N., who by his profession, he’s a sound engineer, he also worked a lot of concerts, so he knows a little bit about crowd control, what he did was everytime a team of volunteers got briefed, he took them throughout the station and placed them at strategic points so everytime that there’s a 45 degree turn on the way down from the platform to UG1, he placed somebody there and basically their job was just to say “Go that way”. We had I don’t know 15 or more people placed throughout the station at all of the ups and downs of the escalators so people didn’t get lost. So we did that at some point, that worked very well. At some point a security firm did that as well as long as it was necessary and that’s the way that people were guided through.

It started with the founding of the Telegram channels, and there were people who got a lot of information in, and people who would be the first contact for newspapers etc. They knew the Telegram channels, that’s where it’s all happening. So they would go there to try to find somebody to speak to. They would go to Hauptbahnhof and try to find somebody to speak to but if they were in their office trying to figure out what’s happening at Hauptbahnhof and at ZOB they would talk to somebody from the back office. And actually what happened on the ground, we called it on the ground, was only possible the way it happened because the back office did a shit ton of work to organise, to direct sources, to direct resources, to where they were needed. And in the first week I would say the process was: there were people who went to Hauptbahnhof or ZOB and worked there and in the back office the whole organisation for that to be working happened. So they created the first shift plans, they created the first working structures, I think on day two it was the first time that we called somebody coordinators. That was basically people who would be there in a time frame and would take more responsibility, basically what it has been later as well but it actually happened on day 2, and that was all coordinated from the back office. So I joined Telegram channels when the war was I think one or two days and I talked to there, and I was trying to figure out where I can be helpful, should I drive to the border, what should I do, what are my resources that I can offer. And then I was like, is there somebody at the stations? And everybody didn’t know, and thought I was gonna go and check. Then I went there, and it turned out nobody was there and I was like okay, I’m here now, nobody’s here and nothing’s happening. I talked to the Bahnhofsmission, but they were not prepared at all. And then we opened up the Hauptbahnhof Arrival Support Telegram chat with 8 people. I think it was over 20 thousand at some point but that was on February 27th 2022 and it started from nothing. The state was not there. I think I have in my calendar when the state was there for the first time. So everything happened simultaneously. I was at the station and reporting about what’s here, what’s not here, what we need, what would be helpful and I reported that into the back office through Telegram, and they would make something useful out of it. They would make all sorts of things. I told them that the Ankunftszentrum Reinickendorf was so far away, and people didn’t know where to go, and they created a flyer and then they would put the PDF into the Telegram chat. And if you had capacity, you could print out that flyer and bring it to the Hauptbahnhof. So they would organise so much in the background. After the first train came, it was so obvious that we needed people who spoke Russian or Ukrainian. So I would tell the back office that we needed native speakers, and they would make the info post in the Telegram group saying if you speak Russian, if you speak Ukrainian go there, you can bring food. They would organise information so you can talk about it, organised in this situation because it was very all over the place. But that was actually what made everything work. And they were in the first week when there was no accommodation by state, they would be calling hotels and they would organise transportation and actually also pay for it. Well I obviously cannot speak for native speakers, but I can say that many people came there for personal motivation because they maybe have Ukrainian roots or have Russian roots and want to show support in favour of Ukrainians and be helpful just like everybody else. I also saw that people who were native speakers had a totally different eperience being in contact with the people who just got off the trains. And I can imagine why because when I speak English to them, it’s just different and I feel when some of the refugees got off trains and then somebody would greet them in their native tongue that would just open this very safe space. That was just not there when I speak in a different language and I feel that was very supportive for the refugees. At the same time that was very hard for the native speakers because they would have to deal with way more emotional load that I would, because people shared stories. And they shared them with me as well but I’m very positive that it’s a whole different thing. So I feel like that eperience is probably fundamentally different. Yeah right, I mean my direction was simple tasks like making sure somebody got a ticket or that was possible, but when it got into just more complicated cases, like I have my grandmother and she wanted to come and to sinc up and meet in that city or maybe call somebody who’s still at home, or knowing somebody is in a car on their journey right now and we want to meet them there, and just things that were more complicated that was something that native speakers would take on. And like I said before, not only took care of that urgent problem then and to make sure that was happening, but also to take care of everything that came with it on the emotional level. Because obviously many native speakers are from Ukraine and at some point many people who arrived at the stations would come back to volunteer later which is a whole different level.

SÜDKREUZ

When I arrived at 2am on the 26th, there was no coordination. There was only an Edeka Cart that volunteers replenished and water. We were standing on the streets.

ZOB

Mein erster Einsatz als Volontärin war am 28.02.2022, ich fuhr abends zum Berlin HBF und half dort den UkrainerInnen, die aus den Zügen ausstiegen. An dem Tag war dort noch keine Hilfe vor Ort außer mir und noch einer jungen Volontärin.

I arrived at Hbf first and sent a few volunteers to ZOB to check if there are buses with refugees; after it was confirmed, the project started

What organisational structures were made on/off site?

HBF

Text to be replaced

SÜDKREUZ

Text to be replaced

ZOB

Text to be repaced

Who was contacted and why? Which side initiated the contact?

HBF

Text to be replaced

SÜDKREUZ

Text to be replaced

ZOB

Text to be repaced

What were the main difficulties you faced during the first 10 days?

HBF

Text to be replaced

SÜDKREUZ

Text to be replaced

ZOB

Text to be repaced

Routine and general structures at BAS stations