Inspired by Brandon Stanton’s “Humans of New York,” the Missoula to Berlin team created their own “Humans of Berlin” series. The people photographed here range from the characters in our stories to interesting people we met on the street. The captions below are a small snippet of their lives — a peek into the person behind the photo.
“You’re only fluent in one language, and you can only speak three at all? If you count English, I speak five.” — This young refugee arrived in Germany with his family ten months ago. He is pictured here in the workshop of Rückenwind, an organization that builds bikes for refugees. | Photo by Alicia Leggett | @offleash568
“Today is my first day in Berlin. I come from Poland. This is a very cool city for street performers. I like children and I can make bubbles, so I make bubbles in the street.” — Street performer Adrian Golabawski near Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. | Photo by Ian Strahn | @impsmontana
“I don’t know if I will have a good position here in society or if society will accept me. If I get good work, good pay then I will stay. But that depends on Syria also. If peace takes place in Syria I will go back because, you know, the homeland stays as the homeland.” — Abdulkader Ajam, who is part of a teacher training class for Syrian refugees at the University of Potsdam. | Photo by Lauren Lewis | @lolewie
“When I came to Germany in 1988, the best thing I was offered was a feeling of belonging, and that I wasn’t being cut off from my culture. Integration is not giving up something, it’s like evolution. As long as you come and you choose to be here, then you have some duties, not just rights.” — Imam Mohamed Taha Sabri, leader of Berlin’s Dar Assalam Mosque. | Photo by Alyssa Gray | @alyssarochellegray
“In the last four months I have been working at the American Academy here in Berlin, researching media distrust and the ‘Lügenpresse’; I’ve spent a lot of time working with people in the private press, in public broadcasting, in the Federal Press Office, even throughout other places in Europe to get a better handle on the situation. My research topic evolved over time when I first came to Germany. At the beginning, I had a different idea of what I wanted to study and I don’t think anyone knew the impact the refugee crisis would have.” — Cristina Gonzalez is a U.S. radio journalist working in Berlin. | Photo by Greg Arno | @grgarno
“A lot of these teachers will be very soft and quiet with the students in their classes and it’s not good for them. I try to be very straight and stern with them, and I think they appreciate it.” — Julia Fath is a former consultant for German developers in Africa and works at Flucht Nach Vorn, a school for unaccompanied minors. | Photo by Rebecca Keith | @beccasaurus21
“I’m still waiting to see if my application is accepted. I don’t want to do nothing while I’m waiting. So I come to Moabit Hilft as a volunteer to help people who come here with my language abilities. I speak Albanian, Turkish, and Macedonian.” — Bequir is from Macedonia and helps at Moabit Hilft, an organization that provides food, water, clothing and basic amenities to refugees as they wait for their asylum process to move forward. | Photo by Sachi Sinhara | @sachi.sinhara
“The trip in was very dangerous. Between the border of Turkey and Iran there was a dead body. He was very young. There was no one to take care of that body, they left it.” — Najib Heydari is from Kabul, Afghanistan, and is currently a refugee at a shelter in the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. | Photo by Adam McCaw | @adam.mccaw
“One of the subjects I studied at university was surveying. One day someone approached me, I don’t know, even today, who it was and when it was. He just approached me: ‘Hey, you’re studying surveying! We need someone to survey for us.’ I said, ‘Why, what do you want me to survey?’ Well, long hum and haw until he said, ‘We’re building a tunnel. We’re building a tunnel from West Berlin to East Berlin.’” — Winfried Schweitzer helped build a tunnel under the Berlin Wall that enabled 57 refugees to flee from East Berlin to West Berlin in 1964. | Photo by Verena Henners
“We fight for the rights.” — Alnour is a refugee from Sudan who arrived in 2012 and has been fighting for refugees’ rights ever since. His organization continues to advocate for the free movement of refugees. — Photo by Shannon O’Hara / @shannoneohara
“I was born here. I am 21 years old, and in the 21 years that I have been here, I still don’t know the area. I don’t really feel at home. I think when you feel good, you must live there. And I feel good in Turkey.” — Raziye Bagci is a student and works for the volunteer organization Hasene. | Photo by Alyssa Gray | @alyssarochellegray
“In the former eastern Germany, there was a word for people who helped others to get over the wall, and it’s “Fluchthelfer,” which means “escape helper.” And I found it quite interesting that there’s a difference in public opinion, between the escape helpers who … got the German Cross of Merit for that and today escape helpers are called traffickers, even if they do it for only good reasons. So we thought: we have to have a campaign that changes this awareness of people doing that. And also, we have to encourage people to actually do so. Of course it would have caused problems if we would have gotten caught, but if you compare it with what people did when they helped people escape from eastern Germany, where there was a high potential to get shot or to end up in jail for years, the risk is quite low today … And it actually was quite funny because this worked out quite well.” — Ruben Neugebauer is a member of the Fluchthilfe.de campaign, which encourages Germans to illegally bring refugees across borders to facilitate their asylum process. — Photo by Lucy Tompkins / @lucybtompkins
Buschan Jawhar walks around the Notunterkunft Karlshorst refugee camp with two-month-old son, Laas. She left Iraq with her family and has lived at the emergency shelter for seven months. Buschan was taken to a hospital far from the camp to give birth and said it was scary having her son in a foreign place. | Photo by Kira Vercruyssen | @kiravphotography
“I invited everybody who wants to make an education program for the refugees. This is really simple. We have the room. We have our new pupils and now we need volunteers. Nobody is a professional teacher. I was so nervous. It was a mess. But it was funny. It was so noisy and there were little kids screaming. It was a fantastic atmosphere. We have a group of 67 volunteers now. You have so many different countries in one room, with different languages, different history, and everyone is helping each other. This is what I love. The project is now seven months old. They’re friends of mine now. On Easter, we had a ‘German Egg Party.’ They call it ‘egg party’ because they don’t know what Easter is.” — Ulrike Fleischer, a defense policy analyst at the German Bundestag. | Photo by Christa Street
“My position is like a triangle. The boss, the people and me. If the boss doesn’t work, if the people don’t work, if I don’t work, then one angle will be cut. Its very important that I have a good relationship with people and also with the chairman of the camp. I don’t want to cut any angle.” — Faisal Eshan is a 23-year-old from Kabul who lives in the Karlshorst refugee camp in Berlin. In May 2016, he was elected by people of his camp to be one of two official translators for his fellow Afghans. | Photo by Maddie Taylor | @maddiegtaylor
“I’ve lived all over the place — Thailand, France and The U.S. But I like Berlin best. I think it’s just because I don’t see the world the same as anyone else.” Tom has lived off and on in Berlin for the last 50 years. | Photo by Tess Haas | @tesshaas
“I’m living here for 18 years. I came in 1998 to visit a friend here in Berlin, I’ve been here ever since. I like this country, I found all what I need, or want … freedom, peace.” — Palestine-born Ihab Afia stands at his booth in a market in the Berlin neighborhood of Neukölln. | Photo by Autumn Barnes | @fumblingabout
“If you can’t put yourself in their place, you can’t do your job.” -Iskikali Karayel, the owner of Islamic burial home Markaz Islamische Bestattungen & Ueberfuehrungen Weltweit, talks about helping Islamic families navigate the burial process in Berlin. Photo by Kayla Robertson | @kaylajoro
