In Wilmington author's new book, volunteers helped Syrian refugees when 'All Else Failed'
In 2016, Wilmington writer Dana Sachs traveled to Greece to help refugees fleeing the civil war in Lebanon. Returning home, she raised money, recruited friends and convinced the late philanthropist Bucky Stein to found Humanity Now, a nonprofit raising funds for the migrants.
She was not alone. Now, in "All Else Failed: The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis," Sachs tells the remarkable and sad story of how ordinary people stepped in to cope with a humanitarian disaster when governments and big-budget aid agencies did little or nothing.
Long story short: The decade-long Syrian civil war killed more than half a million people. The Assad regime, fighting pro-democracy elements, used poison gas and rocket attacks on its own population. Allied groups linked to al Qaeda and Iran set up Islamic fundamentalist fiefdoms, purging opponents.
Before the war, Syria had a population of some 21 million. Today, some two-thirds of them are refugees, many living in camps in Syria, with others in settlements in Turkey, Jordan and surrounding countries. Some 850,000 Syrians live in Germany today.
In 2015, rickety boats began to ply the waters of the eastern Mediterranean, trying to make it to the Greek islands and then, with luck, to Western Europe. Many didn't make it. A news photo of a small Syrian boy, washed up dead on a beach, went viral around the world.
And the world did nothing.
European governments, dealing with growing right-wing isolationist parties, dithered, hoping someone else would handle the mess. The United Nations, the International Red Cross and large aid agencies responded with glacial speed. Teams of experts would helicopter in, take "assessments," then fly out.
Meanwhile, much of Greece was overwhelmed. On the island of Lesbos, home of the ancient Greek poet Sappho, the 80,000 inhabitants were quickly outnumbered by refugees who lacked shelter or a steady supply of food.
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\What happened next, as documented in "All Else Failed" was a minor miracle. Thousands of volunteers flew to Greece and began to organize ad hoc camps with the aid of the refugees themselves. Some had backgrounds in social work or teaching, but many were just volunteers like Jenni, a middle-aged lesbian shade-tree mechanic who had grown up on a New Zealand sheep farm.
The volunteers began raising small sums to aid the work, often online. The small sums became bigger. It wasn't enough, but it kept the refugee crisis from becoming a catastrophe.
Sachs, who thoroughly underplays her own work, describes what happened next in muted, "Just the facts" details. She leaves the horror and outrage to boil on the reader's own back burner.
Some chapters detail life in the camps or in "squats," technically illegal migrant dormitories that sprang up in abandoned buildings in Athens. (Greece was going through a financial crisis at this point, social services were few and there were lots of disused and abandoned buildings.)
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In other chapters we meet the migrants themselves, hear the stories of their flights to survival, and how they labored to build new lives.
"All Else Failed" has more than passing relevance. As Sachs points out, rising oceans, climate change and conflicts over increasingly scarce resources ensure that more waves of migrants are heading our way. What will we do then?
Book review
'ALL ELSE FAILED: The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis'
By Dana Sachs
New York: Bellevue Literary Press, $19.99
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: New book All Else Failed by Dana Sachs addressed Syrian refugee crisis
