Syrian refugees dig deep to help ‘suffering’ Germany after floods

WHEN catastrophic floods swept Germany three weeks ago, Maher Oubaid packed a bag and headed for the scene, determined to help.

He is one of the Syrian volunteer helpers – Syrian refugees living in Germany who dropped everything when the floods struck and rushed to the scene to join the relief effort.

“The Germans helped us by taking us in. Now we have to help them,” Mr Oubaid, 29, says by telephone from Sinzig, in the Ahr Valley.

Mr Oubaid travelled 300 miles from his home in Konstanz, near the Swiss border, to get to the Ahr Valley, reaching the scene two days after the floods.

Three weeks on, he and his fellow Syrians are still there, clearing away the mud long after the television cameras have gone home. At night they sleep on the floor of a local restaurant.

The volunteers are clearing debris from a residential home where 12 people died during the floods because they were disabled and couldn’t get out of the building.

There are around 30 Syrian refugees in Sinzig at the moment, but more than 100 are believed to have taken part in the relief effort so far.

“We had Syrian people come from across Germany. We’ve had people in their 1950s, the youngest at the moment is 17,” says Mr Oubaid.

“People come when they can. Some come for a few days when they can get away from work.

“Some are even taking their holiday time to come here and help.”

It is one of the most striking stories to emerge from the horror of the floods: how Syrian refugees who fled their homes and families to escape the civil war in their country have dropped everything to spend day after day wading through mud to help those who helped them.

It was Mr Oubaid’s cousin Barakat who set the whole thing in motion. “Barakat put up a message on social media saying we should go and help, and it spread quickly.

“Everyone was passing it on and saying we have to do this,” says Mr Oubaid.

“We’re here because we’ve seen this situation before. We’ve seen it in Syria.

“We know what it’s like when people lose their homes, when entire towns are destroyed.

“In Syria it was the Assad regime that destroyed our homes.

“Here it was nature. But the suffering is the same.”

Mr Oubaid is no stranger to suffering. He is a native of Deir al-zor, a city in eastern Syria that suffered vicious repression from the Assad regime only to endure a brutal years-long siege by Islamic State forces.

He was one of the thousands who abandoned their homes to escape and fled to Europe, arriving in Germany with nothing but what he could carry.

Today he has a good job and pays taxes. He was studying to become a vet in Deir al-zor but had to abandon his degree because of the civil war.

After arriving in Germany, he worked for a time at a zoo, before getting a better paid job as a lab assistant at Konstanz University.

“I’d say around 80 per cent of the Syrians

helping out with the floods have jobs,” he says.

He lives with his wife, who followed him to Germany along the same perilous migrant route.

His cousin Barakat, the man who started the Syrian flood relief effort, is studying at Stuttgart University, and recently brought out a book about the experiences of Syrian refugees in their adopted country.

The book’s title, a slogan of Angela Merkel’s that became notorious at the time of the migrant crisis, could be a motto for the Syrians currently helping Germany in its hour of need: “We can do it.”