Otto Nothmann was able to identify himself to Allied soldiers in the chaos of postwar Berlin with his International Refugee Organization ID card. DP status entitled him to an increased level of food and lodging in a Jewish DP camp.
Otto Nothmann´s International Refugee Organization ID card © Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York, AR 10492
"Asylum is only a marginal part of my life. I don't live to get it." The musician Bahila H. comes from Syria and now lives in Berlin. She is studying architecture at the Brandenburg Technical University Cottbus-Senftenberg, continues to make music and hopes for a life in Berlin away from traditions and the suppression of opinions.
Alaa M. and her husband came to Germany in 2015. They have built a new life in Berlin, their twins were born in exile. Alaa is a self-confident woman in Berlin who has to fight many prejudices. She does not accept that people judge her by her appearance.
In her essay, Widad Nabi reflects critically on belonging as reality or illusion, her experiences and feelings in Germany, and on exile not as…
Benno Simoni describes how he grew up and lived as a Jew in the GDR and – until the building of the Berlin Wall…
Nazeeha Saeed, a journalist from Bahrain who lives in Paris and Berlin in exile since 2016, speaks about her journalistic work in Bahrain and…
Selafet Hizarçi came to Germany from Turkey in 1969, where she immediatly began to work, learn the language and lateron started a family. Within…
Alaa Muhrez talks about the new friendships she has made in Berlin and about the potential as well as difficulty when it comes to…
First Alaa Muhrez and her husband moved to a village near Leipzig, then they moved to Berlin. Alaa describes experiences of discrimination that she…
Alaa Muhrez talks about her experiences of arriving and everyday life in exile, about questions of identity and experiences of exclusion.
On an unusually bright morning in Berlin I was sitting alone, sipping a cup of coffee and hesitating over a loud noise. This word…