Spenger reports: Ten family members lost in the earthquake.
The association Asyl Spenge supports the refugee Syrian with a fundraiser. The money is for
Clearing equipment, food and medicines are used.
Spenge. The willingness to help the victims of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria is great. But only a fraction of that arrives on the Syrian side of the border.
The two Spengers, Samir Al Najjar and Dahlawi Asfari, who were born in Syria, know this firsthand. They are in regular contact with their relatives in Idlib and the White Helmets, a Syrian civil defense organization awarded by France and Germany. They are aware that if relief supplies don’t reach Syria soon, the survivors of the earthquake will die of cold and hunger. Together with the Asyl Spenge association, they therefore want to collect donations for the Idlib region.
Dahlawi Asfari finds it difficult to talk about the fate of his family. But he does it because it’s the only thing he can do at the moment. He lost ten people under the rubble of his hometown of Idlib. Including his wife’s brother, his wife and two children. Asfari said he called his relatives in Idlib every day until the earthquake struck.
But since Monday everything has changed. He and Samir Al Najjar, who has lived in Germany for seven years and is involved in the Asyl Spenge association, get most of the information from the White Helmets aid organization. At first it was said that the children could still be rescued from the rubble alive, says Asfari. But the helpers could not save the children. The noises of those who were buried eventually fell silent move to Spenge. Asfari’s personal fate is particularly painful. Asfari lost his wife Zelal to cancer two years ago at the age of 37. Now he lives alone in Spenge with his five children. White Helmet helpers regularly report to Samir Al Najjar on the situation in the Idlib region after the earthquake. The whole area is destroyed, they tell him. They have hardly any clearing equipment to free people from the rubble, no food and medicine for the survivors, some helpers would have tried to work the concrete with small hammers. On top of that, the area where resistance fighters and those persecuted by the regime live is still being shelled by the Assad regime. Assad has no interest in helping in this region. This makes organizing help particularly difficult.
The board of directors of the Asylum Spenge, consisting of Anne Beckmann, Samir Al Najjar and Karl Hankel, discussed for a long time how the help should be organized in the most sensible way so that it actually gets to the affected Syrian region. “This must not go through the Syrian government under any circumstances,” says Asfari. None of that would matter. A monetary donation can help. In the end, everyone agreed that the best option was a monetary donation to the White Helmets. The helpers could use this to transport clearing equipment, clothing and medicines from Turkish cities that were not affected via the remaining border crossing to Syria. says Samir Al Najjar.
An account has been set up for donations. All the information is available on the club’s website
www.asyl-spenge.de or on Tel. 0174 9421554.
Quelle: Neue westfälische
Foto: Linda Schnepel