‘Violent crime’ at Güstrow railway station: this was the headline used by the police in their press releases. In recent months, there has been a sharp increase in such incidents, including fights, verbal abuse, threats, thefts and even stabbings – mostly involving Syrians, Russians and Afghans, but Germans were also involved. Weapons and alcohol were often involved. Federal and state police, the municipal public order office and railway security services had to deploy barriers, which even led to train delays.
Marina Lange no longer feels safe. The saleswoman at the newspaper shop in the station admits to being afraid. Even though the police and security guards from the German railway company patrol the area every day and ask the employees if everything is okay, as she says. “For a year now, since I’ve been working here, I’ve had to watch people fighting on the station forecourt, sitting outside and drinking. Especially at the end of the month, when people receive their welfare payments, many buy spirits and drink them straight away. Or they steal them from the shop,‘ says the saleswoman. ’Sometimes it’s unbearable.‘ She also has to listen to crude remarks such as, ’I’ll smash your face in!”
She observes that ‘everyone’ meets here at the station. Often, she says, it is ‘the foreigners’. ‘When they are banned from the shop, they come back anyway, disguised with sunglasses.’ One of them threw the ham croissant she had just sold back in her face because it contained pork, which Muslims do not eat. Fortunately, some young people intervened. ‘Otherwise, we have to rely on the police, especially when there are fights outside. But the twenty minutes it takes for them to get here feel like an eternity.’
The travellers themselves often confirm that they do not feel comfortable here at Güstrow station, says the blonde saleswoman. Magdalene Klerowitz, a passenger from North Rhine-Westphalia, admits that she does not feel comfortable here, especially as a woman, and that she has already been harassed.