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Meet Angela Merkel the six-month-old daughter of a refugee. She lives in a former hospital in Hanover. Her mother, Ophelya Ade, came to Germany as a refugee from Ghana with two children. She decided to name her new daughter, Angela, who was born in February, after the German chancellor to express her admiration and gratitude to the country that gave her a new home.
"She is a big woman," Ms Ade told the German local TV channel NDR. "She provided me a shelter, and Germany takes care of my children."
The family shares its temporary home with more than 730 other refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan. Other refugees in Hanover live in dorms, school gyms, container houses or in an exhibition hall. More than 440 people lived in apartments rented for them by the city, as of June, according to a local newspaper. German authorities are looking for accommodation for hundreds of thousands of refugees. About 179,000 people requested asylum in Germany in the first half of this year compared to 203,000 people in all of 2014. While many Germans help the refugees as volunteers, there is also an increase in xenophobic violence, including attacks on refugee homes and shelters and anti-immigrant demonstrations.
Still, Germany is the country where the little Angela is going to grow up. She has German citizenship because her father is German, the news agency DPA reported. Her mother told NDR she hopes her daughter would become "a president" one day.
Washington Post
