Anna Wenske, 69, worked for decades at the national theater of East Germany, where she was born and still lives. “After the reunification, everything went kaput,” she said. She lost her job and her savings; it took her years of part-time work to reach a kind of equilibrium.
Now she resents what she considers the easy path offered to refugees while Germans suffer.
“Too many people exist on this planet and everyone wants to come to us,” she said in a sunny Weimar, “and we tell everyone welcome and we have nothing left for ourselves.” When it comes to Ukraine, she said, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia lied when he said he would not invade, “but I don’t trust the United States any more than Russia.”
According to the NYTimes voting for your own best interests is a Nazi thing.
