Passau, Germany: As dawn breaks, ghost-like figures with sunken heads laden with babies, bundles of food and clothing can be seen trudging slowly along the autobahn. Alongside the usual tips on tailbacks and delays, traffic bulletins on the local radio alert drivers to “pedestrians who have been spotted on the A3 between the Austrian border and south Passau”.
The scenario is not a one-off, but has become a familiar sight for the residents of the southern German town of Passau, as people traffickers drop off a daily average of 700 refugees — mostly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis. As soon as the smugglers’ vehicles have crossed the border between Austria and Germany, they abandon the refugees in woods, fields, secluded farms, and even on the hard shoulder of the motorway.
Warning signs have now been erected and speed limits introduced after a serious accident last week in which five Syrians were injured, one seriously, after being hit by a car.
The traffickers — believed to be mostly from Romania and Bulgaria — take advantage of the dark to escape, discarding most of their vehicles in which they have typically travelled in convoy to Germany, having crammed as many people as they can into each car. Often the first the police get to hear about them is in early morning calls from locals who find the exhausted migrants sitting on their front lawns.
“It happens regularly that someone puts on the coffee machine and pulls up the blinds to find 20 or more people in the garden, desperate for water,” said Frank Koller, a regional spokesman for the federal police. He said all indications are that the amount of arrivals is only going to increase. “A month ago we had 400 a day, now it’s 700, and I don’t think we’ve even reached the tip of the iceberg yet,” he said.
Passau, a sleepy town at the confluence of three rivers and a favourite mooring point for cruise liners in Bavaria, has now emerged as the most popular entry point to Germany for refugees who have made their way via the western Balkan route to get to central and western Europe.
Its strategic advantages are clear: it is the closest part of Germany to eastern Europe, accessible via three motorway exits. Some have dubbed it the “German Lampedusa”, and a “laboratory for refugee politics”, in a month in which the government has said Germany can expect 800,000 refugees this year.
The west Balkan road is the same route as that taken by the abandoned lorry discovered in Austria on Thursday, in which 71 people — many believed to be Syrians — suffocated. Passau is likely to have been their destination.
At a makeshift reception centre sandwiched between a nightclub and a fitness centre, run by the Federal Agency for Technical Relief in Passau, crowds of refugees were being processed on Thursday by police, many of whom have been brought in from around the country to help the local force cope with the extraordinary demands. Other officers are out patrolling the motorway and surrounding area, picking up refugees and traffickers round the clock.
“These are the ones we have picked up, but there is likely a huge number of refugees out there that we haven’t found, largely because we haven’t got the capacity,” said chief inspector Jorg Grossmann, from Gottingen in central Germany, during a 12-hour shift.
Under a corrugated-iron-roofed shelter where newcomers were queueing, he handed out registration numbers, which were recorded in a computer next to information about where and when the newcomers were found. In the top pocket of his vest, next to his handcuffs, he had a supply of jelly bears for the children. “We didn’t get much special training for this in advance,” he said. “But I know how important it is to communicate with these people, to tell them they are safe now that they are in Germany.”
Locals have donated cuddly toys, nappies, baby food. A local supermarket has recently turned up with boxes of bubble mixture and yo-yos, much to the delight of the children. People lie beneath umbrellas donated by restaurants and breweries, to protect them from the heat. The place buzzes with a multitude of languages from Pashto and Dari, to Arabic, Urdu and Kurmanji. “But we have little choice but to make do with our basic school English and sign-language,” Koller, the spokesman, said.
Hanan and Marwan were comforting their daughter and son, Betul, five, and Can, seven, who were exhausted and irritable after their 10-day journey from the city of Kamishli in north-eastern Syria, which had taken them via Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Germany. “It was cold and dirty, and we had no food,” said Hanan in broken English. “Then this morning we were left in a field at around 4am, I did not know where we are.” She proudly showed off her armband bearing the code AS 397 127 2000 – her all-important German identification number.
Betul had toothache, and Can, who has learning difficulties, was lying on a camp bed and had soiled himself. “I want to see my father. He is in Baden-Wurttemberg,” Hanan said, pronouncing it slowly, as if for the first time. “Is that near?” She was relieved to be told it was the state next door. She borrowed a phone and called him to say that she too was now safe.
Jad from Aleppo was keen to get to his younger brother, who has been in Mainz for seven months. “Daesh said they would recruit my 19-year-old brother unless my father gave them a lot of money, so after he’d paid them off, my father immediately sent him to Germany to safety,” he said.
Jad had arrived in Passau that morning in a €500 (Dh2,059.6) “taxi” – a trafficker’s car – from Budapest. The traffickers dropped him “just behind the river”. He knew he was in Germany when he saw a sign with a picture of the German flag. He was using a GPS device on his phone to get him to the railway station to head for Mainz when the police picked him up at 6am.
Despite having just €25 to his name, along with the orange shirt and flowery shorts he was wearing, the economics student, who was forced by the war to interrupt his studies, was already making plans. “I think I’ll need about 18 months to learn German, then I’d like to resume my studies, and in about seven years I’ll be able to apply for a German passport,” he said. His optimism was boosted by the announcement earlier this week by Angela Merkel that Syrian refugees who arrive in Germany will automatically receive asylum. “That makes Germany a paradise for us,” he said.
