Kira & Valentina's stories
We had some heated debates this week about whether or not it is worth talking to media. I still believe it is. Many do not. Many want to share their stories but language barrier, fear of retribution.
Ironically I learned this week something I should have understood a long time ago, namely that I can share here what “regular” journalists often cannot and do not. I was approached yesterday by several Ukrainians willing to share their own stories of adapting to their new lives in Austria, but anonymously, without names or places. I agreed to translate and share. Translation is the next issue. While some, including myself, would argue that after two years you should be able to say a few sentences in German or English, others point out, rightly so, that the most vulnerable, those whose stories we need to hear, are often not able to do this, and as a result are overlooked by local journalists without budgets for translators.
In this context, I will continue to share with you first-person stories, anonymised to protect their authors, who fear any potential negative consequences from speaking publicly in a new country. This too, is understandable. Therefore print journalism, in this particular area, I think has more to offer than video at the moment.
Below find please two stories I heard yesterday.
The third is really bonkers, and I need to get more details before I share it with you. Teaser: a husband and wife who run a “home orphanage” in Ukraine came to Austria with all their foster kids (I still don’t know how many!), claimed child benefit, as Ukrainians are legally entitled to do, and have now been slapped with a bill for over €33,000 (!) to pay back funds received as the state has determined they are not the legal parents of these children and therefore not entitled to these payments. I don’t dare dive into these waters until I hear the full story…
Kira’s story
Hi Tanja.
I would like to share my experience with part-time employment in Austria, but not on camera.
I live with my kids near Salzburg.
In 2022, we were given housing in a little building near the owner’s home. The owner runs a major Austrian company.
They helped us a lot and were kind.
They offered us to clean one of the offices of the family business. There are two floors (400 square meters in total). Once per week.
They said I would receive about €190 per month (€11 per hour), because in order not to lose my social payments I could not earn more than €270 (€110 for me plus €80 for each child).
I came home from work totally exhausted.
I received a salary of €101, so about €6 per hour. I asked them why, and they never gave me an answer.
I do not know how it is now, but then if you earned anything, no matter what the amount, then the authorities would calculate your social payment for a long time and sometimes not pay you for two months.
The family offered an acquaintance of mind to clean a different office, every day. They did not give her an employment contract, they only showed her the first page. She worked for two weeks for them. For that time period, she had a contract. Thankfully, she checked it and inquired about a few details. It was said there that if she after the one month trial period would decide to quit and leave earlier than after six months of employment, then she would have to pay some kind of fines to them.
She refused to work during the one month trial period.
I told them that I cannot work there anymore, that I want to go to German language classes and work in my profession.
They called me ungrateful and asked us to find new housing immediately. Although we had a rental contract for another three months.
I was truly grateful to them for the help that they gave us, but the work payment felt like an ultimatum and mini-slavery.
Later, it turned out, that most of their companies employee refugees from a variety of countries.
We got really lucky and Caritas helped us to find an apartment in a different city.
I remember that part-time job like a nightmare.
If it was not for that situation, I would have sought other small jobs, but that job stripped me of any desire.
I am really trying to learn German and I hope I will be able to find a good job soon where they will not use refugees like slaves.
It is a sin, they say, to complain. We have a roof over our heads, we are safe. But sometimes it is scary to take a step, having had a really bad experience, where others used our lack of German knowledge and lack of understanding of local work contracts.
I am hopeful that thanks to the stories of Ukrainians through your communications with journalists that maybe something will improve in the future.
My family and I thank you for the work you do to help Ukrainians.
Your work gives hope for change and that our lives can improve for the better. I wish success to you and your loved ones, and so that all the good that you do will come back to you.
With respect,
Kira
Valentina’s story
Tanja’s note — I immediately gave Valentina the email address for the federal government and urged her to write them and include the address of her housing. It is, no surprise to anyone who has been following the situation — in Lower Austria, an Austrian state with the far right now in government and in charge of refugee affairs.
Tatiana, good afternoon. My sister wrote about the journalist. Can you help us resolve some issues, you come recommended by friends.
We are very humiliated in the boarding house where we live. They threaten us with eviction.
Yes, I would like it to be anonymous. Because they threaten to evict us for complaining. I'll tell you what happened to us.
It all started with my mother's illness, we live here as a family, I am here with my son, 14 years old, as well as my sister, and her son, 3 years old, and my father and my mother, who was was sick. We live in a small hotel in Lower Austria (Tanja — name removed). When my mother was dying, the administrator refused to help us call an ambulance, but my son speaks good German, so we called it ourselves. We also needed his help in the hospital, but he refused to come because he had an extra job, so we did it ourselves again. My mother died, and he couldn't even go to the hospital with me that day.
Now I'm trying to get help, running between Caritas and the Lower Austrian authorities to get my mother's ashes for burial, asking the administrator for help, and again, zero. Then my nephew got sick, and again I went to the administrator, who said it was not his working time. The payment of funds is made when it is convenient for him, that is, for the administrator (we eat on our own, so we receive €49). We are not given anything except toilet paper, so we save the money we are given for food and buy all the hygiene products ourselves. Caritas takes care of us and comes every two Sundays, (name redacted), a Caritas employee, said that according to the contract we should be given hygiene products per person every month, but both (name redacted), the hotel manager, and (name redacted), the owner, ignore this.
No one has been familiarizing us with the rights and obligations of the hotel for more than a year, almost from the moment we moved in. And now we are being asked to clean the entire hotel, which was never done before. And when you start to say something, or where it is written, the answer is, "If you don't like it, look for another place," and I quote:
“(Last name redacted) hat diese Hausordnung zur Pflicht gemacht. Wer sich nicht daran hält wird sich eine neue Unterkunft suchen müssen.
Die Hausordnung wird nun gedruckt.”
(Name removed) has made these house rules mandatory. Those who do not follow them will have to look for new housing.
The house rules are now being printed.
I have never complained about anything, I am from Sumy region, 8 km from the border with Russia, nowhere to go back, constant bombs and rockets, I am learning the language, we are from a teacher's family, and we will not sit on the neck of the Austrians. I thought life was getting better, but I cry every night.
I share these stories in the hope that someone in charge may read them. I share them because I believe Austrian tax payers should know how their money is spent in the name of those in need. I hope that real journalists may start to ask tough questions. I hope the authorities might start to believe the Ukrainians when they say this is how they are mistreated behind the scenes.
This too, is unfortunately, the reality in Austria for many.
Brief update on Cards for Ukraine I wrote this morning here. Thank you in advance…
In other news…
Update on Ukraine’s mobilisation legislation
Ukraine Goes on Defence Against a Relentless Russia with harrowing photography from the front lines.
Two very important pieces by Shaun Walker:
They told me we’re all Russians’: fears grow over ‘re-education’ of Ukrainian children
Stories and photos of Ukrainians jailed for collaborating with the Russians, an often overlooked, and obviously incredibly difficult, subject.
Thanks for sharing. I read everything posted here. FWIW, I really do think western democracies need to evolve to become more participatory because it is a truism that both shit and cream rise to the top. IMHO, russia's invasion has made "it" much more obvious how much tokenism and virtue signaling is put forward as being a vicarious form of doing something.
In the past, at least where I am from, it was well understood, that the aforementioned was more understood at the bottom end of the social economic ladder and that the longer a crisis lasted the more its downstream effects would creep its way up the food chain when the possibility of real change had the best chance. I think many lessons/social skills have been lost because the west has surrendered so much of its moral vitality for comfort and security.
Inflation index is one example where governments often deceive the public about what is going on, as well as the definition of poverty, people suffer and unless a crisis is protracted, very few people really understand at a human level and that is a general failing of western democracies, at least those whose political institutions are based on the representative form. Maybe it is different in Europe, but what I have read here reminds me so much of the lies that I have witnessed, and when I was younger subjected to, in the U.S.. and Canada.
Blah, blah, blah....fwiw, it is understandable to get depressed, but if people who are in a position to articulate and champion the interests of those who are either unable (e.g. fear of repercussions) to communicate social injustice don't then how much worse will the future be otherwise. Just saying I respect your efforts, even though at the beginning I had doubts.