For Michael Rusheinsky, it all started in August 2015. Huge numbers of refugees were arriving. It was 35 degrees in the shade. There was no water. No food. No medical support. This was central Berlin – but it looked to him like Kabul. “There were volunteers from Doctors Without Borders who have worked in Gaza and Afghanistan but these were the worst conditions they have ever had to deal with,” he told me.
Rusheinsky was a jobbing actor at the time, but soon became a professional refugee handler, co-ordinating volunteers at the main reception centre in the German capital. He is a manifestation of what the tabloid Bild called “Helles Deutschland” – a light and moral Germany; yet as the country prepares for regional elections on 13 March, it is “Dunkles [‘dark’] Deutschland” that is capturing the headlines.
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