"What can we do to get our friends back?"
German school students deeply dismayed at deportation to Turkey of their Kurdish school friends
Frankfurter Rundschau, 6 November 2003 (Translation by Institute of Race Relations)

Frankfurter Rundschau: Mrs. Held, the 15-member family that was deported during the autumn holidays included three of your pupils. School began again on Monday. Did the children know about the deportation?

Anna Held: The news had spread like wildfire among many of them and caused great shock. But the pupils didn¹t really know the lasting consequences this would have and what it would mean. The family were very well integrated. They had lived for the past six years in the neighbouring village of Wilsenroth, and the deportation was carried out by an enormous operation, a big deployment of police and the street cordoned off in the middle of the night, which terrified local residents as well.

FR: How did the pupils react when they heard what had happened to their classmates?

AH: Many pupils were very, very sad. Fears have grown, especially among those who have experienced loss and psychological wounds through events such as divorce, separation or being put in a home. The same is true for those who are themselves in the midst of asylum proceedings or only have a temporary residence permit. The pupils perceived the state violence of the deportation as direct violence which they want to resist.

FR: What questions did the children ask?

AH: Why were the family taken away? Will they be allowed to return? What can I do to bring them back? What does Œasylum¹ mean, and why can some stay and not others? Why just those ones? Have they committed a crime? Why can things happen that way?

FR: Now you and your colleagues, as state employees, have a duty to represent the state. How have you done that?

AH: We responded to the pupils¹ questions openly and directly, because we are responsible for all our pupils. We explained to the pupils the individual legal steps that an asylum seeker in Germany has to go through. In response to pupils¹ requests, we spoke about the reasons why people come to us in Germany, why they need us, that there are countries where there is a lot of injustice, infringements of human rights, and methods of torture, too.

FR: Don¹t such topics make excessive demands on a teacher? After all, they¹re not even in university curricula.

AH: We deal with pupils from many different countries. From Africa, the many regions of war and crisis, and from Turkey, too. Schools today are entrusted with and familiar with some children and young people with very complex and drastic fates, and find themselves playing a central counselling role in society, for which they are inadequately prepared.

FR: What did you tell the children when they asked what they could do against the deportation of their classmates?

AH: First of all, we expressed our own powerlessness. In addition, we took up the pupils¹ ideas of solidarity to express themselves through signatures and petitions. How could we explain the consequences of the final deportation verdict to them? We explained that talks were held with the lawyers and with the Aliens Office in Giessen, but that these proved
useless. Neither we, as employees of the state, nor the directors of the school were informed about the deportation, nor were the municipality or the mayor.

FR: Are you in touch with the family?

AH: Yes, by phone. After arriving in Istanbul, they were arrested and subsequently taken to the interior of the country, to Kayseri, where a remote relative lives. They can stay there for another three weeks. My three pupils said that they absolutely want to return to Germany.

FR: Is there any hope?

AH: I am in touch with the Office for External Affairs and with the petition committee of the Landstag. By means of a concerted action and with the help of sponsors, we want to at least bring back the 15-year old daughter, so that she can complete secondary school. Without that she will count in Turkey as someone who has discontinued their schooling and will have no chance of completing school or getting a training place, not to speak of a
professional activity. She¹s a good pupil in class, and also the class spokesperson of the St. Blasius final-year class and a very good football player in the local girls¹ group.

FR: What is to become of the rest of the family?

AH: There is great willingness to help. It goes so far that families, including teachers, are ready to adopt the twelve deported children

FR: Do you think their Kurdish parents will accept that?

AH: I can imagine they might, because already previously they made enormous efforts to give their children good prospects. The reaction to this family¹s fate has shown how positively integration can function, and how at the same time it can be experienced as a contradiction when, as has occurred in this instance, people are torn from their social community.

FR: Will these events also have a longer-term effect on your work?

AH: As teachers at the school, our efforts to shape a space for our pupils to live in are being counteracted. These drastic harsh acts have impeded our demands for integration. There is no doubt that greater communication should be ensured among state institutions.