Insults, threats, knife attacks: On local trains, railway employees are increasingly exposed to attacks from passengers. According to the union, the main perpetrators are young asylum seekers. For the staff in Thuringia, the job is even “sometimes life-threatening”.
They are descriptions that leave you speechless and trigger anger. Horrifying scenes that train drivers and train attendants in Thuringia experience almost every day: verbal and physical violence, insults, threats, knife attacks.
In most cases, the perpetrators are said to be young asylum seekers.
“I have an average of three employees sitting in my Erfurt office every week for legal advice. They were attacked, spat on, insulted, threatened or pushed,” says Steffi Recknagel in an interview with FOCUS online. The 55-year-old heads the office of the Railway and Transport Union (EVG) in Thuringia.
“The worst case was that a train attendant was threatened with a knife,” reports Recknagel. Another was attacked from behind – “the air was knocked out of her”. In further incidents, female employees were “slapped”, “kicked”, “pulled on their jackets” and treated “totally aggressively”. Sentences like “As a woman, you have nothing to say to me!”
There are problems on a number of routes in Thuringia, says the trade unionist, but on the almost 50 kilometer long section between the state capital Erfurt and Suhl in the south of the Free State it is “extreme”.
Reason: The Thuringian initial reception center for refugees with several hundred asylum seekers, mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Turkey, is located in Suhl. Many of them regularly take the train to Erfurt and back.
“I drive the Erfurt-Suhl route every day,” explains Steffi Recknagel to FOCUS online. “And unfortunately I have to say it this way: it is mostly young men from the initial reception center who misbehave completely in our trains. They always travel in groups and feel strong together.”
Anyone who points out German rules and laws to immigrants or tries to help someone in distress must expect headwinds. “Recently, a passenger who got involved was also threatened,” reports the trade unionist. “When something happens while driving, some people now say to themselves: I’d better look away now before I’m the next victim.”
Even the railway staff prefer to avoid conflicts. “It is sometimes life-threatening. Our people are afraid, very afraid,” said Steffi Recknagel to FOCUS online. “We have employees who say: If these groups are on the train, then I won’t check tickets. Then I stay at the front with the train driver or lock myself in my cabin until I get to a safe station and they get out.”
Security guards are now deployed on many trains, but that is far from enough, says Recknagel. Firstly, there are too few security employees. “Besides, they can’t do much more than kick people out at the next train station.”
The perpetrators would then usually be taken away by the police and questioned, but would be released immediately. “A week later we have the same people sitting on the train again and the whole thing repeats itself,” criticizes the EVG branch manager. “Nothing happens, it just doesn’t happen.”
According to the trade unionist, both private companies such as Erfurter Bahn and Abellio are struggling with such difficulties, as is Deutsche Bahn. “The South Thuringia Railway, which also runs the Erfurt-Suhl-Meiningen route, has now turned to politicians with a cry for help.”
Recknagel is referring to a four-page incendiary letter that the works council of the company based in Meiningen sent to Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke). The letter dated March 15, 2024 is available to FOCUS online.
It is a document that frightens and shakes up.
In clear words that, according to the authors, are “not necessarily” politically correct, the employee representatives denounce the safety situation on local trains on the Erfurt-Suhl-Meiningen route. This is “dramatic” and has taken a “sometimes more than threatening” development.
“People with a migration background” from the asylum seekers’ home in Suhl were mainly responsible for the attacks. The works council: “We are not talking about exceptions or the infamous ‘individual cases’; rather, we are talking about almost everyday incidents.”
Many of the troublemakers do not have valid tickets and, according to their own statements, no money to buy tickets. They behaved aggressively during checks. In addition to punches and kicks, female colleagues were “sexistly insulted and spit on in a disgusting way.”
Some of the immigrants have already pulled down their pants and shown their private parts to the railway employees.
According to the works council, there would also be “excesses of violence among the members of this group of people themselves”. As a result, emergency brakes had to be pulled or the doors had to be emergency unlocked on the open road. The young train driver then had to enter the “passenger compartment battlefield” to operate the technology so that the train could continue running.
“Our colleague had to continue the journey to Suhl train station in fear of death and with a railcar that was heavily contaminated with human blood,” the fire letter says. “We don’t need to talk at this point about the psychological consequences for our still very young colleague and the passengers, given the scenes that could have come from a civil war zone!”
As another “repulsive example,” the authors cite a scene at the train station in the small town of Zella-Mehlis.
There, a colleague had to “stand protectively in front of two young girls who were being severely harassed by members of the group of people mentioned.” She was then “threatened and panicked to such an extent” that she “had to flee across the tracks in order to avoid becoming a victim of direct physical violence!”
The works council emphasizes: “We are talking about a mother of two children who we don’t want to explain why her mother is in the hospital or why she doesn’t come home at all!”
The situation is now so dramatic that even husbands privately accompany their wives who work for the railways on the train in order to “protect them!”
In the appeal for help to Thuringia’s Prime Minister Ramelow, the authors criticize that politicians at the federal and state levels repeatedly talk about “integration” and “tolerance towards migrants”. You counter:
“How can you expect citizens of this country to be open to the refugee policy that is being practiced when it happens – practically every day, and not just on public transport! – have to witness such violence, brutalization and absolute contempt for our laws and society?”
Most perpetrators do not have the slightest respect for the German state and the German police. How should they then have respect for the service employees of the Süd-Thüringen-Bahn and the security forces deployed, asks the works council. The idea is “an absolute joke”.
Finally, the authors call on government officials to “defuse or put an end to these scandalous conditions as soon as possible.” One sees politicians as having a duty because: “Who, if not you, created these conditions?”
Of course, they are aware that their descriptions could “push them into a certain political corner” and be labeled as “xenophobic” or even “right-wing extremist,” according to the writers. “But at this point we have to speak plainly!”
The warning, which spread like wildfire in the media and social networks, had an impact.
At the end of April, representatives of the railway company, the federal police and the Thuringian Ministry of Transport met. They agreed to increase security personnel on the Erfurt-Suhl route. The state agreed to cover the costs. They also want to meet every three months and develop a “security concept”.
Will this solve the problems? Railway union member Steffi Recknagel has doubts. “Politicians have shown understanding and promised support, but we now finally want to see the facts!” It is not yet clear at all when the promised money will come and how many additional security employees can be deployed on the problem route.
Recknagel would like the security forces to be given “more control”. In addition, she calls for “consistent prosecution” of the perpetrators. Because what is currently happening on the Thuringian trains is a reflection of the conditions in our society. “This cannot simply be dismissed.”
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