FRIEDLAND

with lush greenery, birdsong, half-timbered houses and neat front gardens with garden gnomes. Only the trains hurtling past all the time seemed to disturb the silence and convey an air of “transit.”

We spent two weeks filming in the Friedland camp and heard the refugees’ stories – stories full of despair, grief, trauma and violence. They made this idyll seem surreal when we went back to our peaceful country inn to sit down at the dinner table in the evenings

When the camp was opened in 1945, the first refugees to arrive were emaciated, sick and desperate Germans. They belonged to the perpetrators, those responsible for a terrible war. But at the human level, their individual stories of loss, death and the rape of women and children don’t differ much from those of the people who are seeking refuge now. Back then, most of them didn’t talk a lot about their traumatic experiences, which is perhaps why there is little collective memory of what it means to be a refugee and have everything to lose. We have forgotten that we Germans once also needed helping hands and sympathetic ears.

New arrivals In Friedland get a friendly welcome: in fact, the camp looks almost like a model of what a "welcoming culture" in Germany could be like – a friendly island at the heart of “Fortress Europe.” But the refugees only stay there briefly and then go off into an uncertain future – where they frequently experience another face of Germany. At a time when refugee hostels have been attacked in many places throughout the country, we are keen to give each refugee a face and a voice and an opportunity to tell their tales and talk about the situation in their home countries. In doing so, we are also challenging the anonymous statistics about a so-called "flood of refugees” with real people.