You hardly stand out among all the travelers.

Up to 2000 people from Ukraine still arrive at Frankfurt Central Station every day.

Some are in transit.

Others still have no idea how their lives should go on.

Fleeing from the war, her strength has reached this far.

In order to be able to breathe deeply, many decide to stay in Frankfurt for the time being.

More than 10,000 refugees from Ukraine are currently housed in hotels, halls and shelters in the city.

There are also 4,000 people who have fled from other parts of the world.

"That's more than we've ever had," says Elke Voitl (The Greens), Head of Social Affairs.

Marie Lisa Kehler

Deputy head of the regional section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

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With the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the city quickly restarted the aid structures.

Hotels were rented, new accommodation opened, and a first-aid center for 2,000 people at the fair was organized on behalf of the state.

Above all, those who state that they want to stay in Germany, but do not name a specific city as their destination, will find a contact point here.

From here, after a few days of arrival, the people were transferred to the initial reception center in Gießen, from where they were then assigned to the municipalities.

An intermediate step that meant stress for many and which Voitl and her team criticized early on.

For a few days, people have been able to stay in the exhibition hall until they are assigned to a municipality.

The mandatory registration

which previously took over the initial reception center in Giessen can now also take place in Frankfurt.

"This means a lot of relief for the refugees - and also for us," says Voitl.

Meanwhile, many Frankfurters are still willing to help.

However, there have been fewer offers to the city to take in people from Ukraine in their own households.

Voitl suspects that this could also have something to do with the city's consistent attitude towards private providers, which was often criticized in the early days.

When the first refugees reached the city, many offered their guest rooms for shared use, were willing to move a little closer together in order to offer the people from Ukraine a short-term home.

But in the vast majority of cases, the city rejected these offers of help.

Many providers have not fully thought through the consequences of their willingness to help and have not been sufficiently aware of what it can mean to live with severely traumatized people,

so Voitl.

At the beginning, the city announced that it would carefully examine every offer – both to protect the refugees and the landlords.

Mutual willingness to compromise required

An approach that many found difficult to understand at first.

The accusation was that it was too bureaucratic and too cumbersome.

Voitl counters: “We couldn’t have been responsible for that.

So it was safer to open another gym.”