That was the first time I realized what xenophobia really is.
As a master I was also the substitute foreman,
when the actual foreman was on holidays.
I had to share out the work to the young people
who had only just finished training.
And then I heard: “What? You are giving me orders?”
“No way. Even if you have your certificate, you’re still a foreigner
“and you don’t have the right to give me orders.”
That was the first time I encountered open hostility.
I was simply not accepted as a human being.
In the GDR I went through a lot thanks to my boxing career.
I was a boxer.
I had to compete. I also boxed for the national GDR team.
When I boxed in Neustadt, Dresden, I can still remember,
people saying things like: “Hey you, watch out!
“Have you ever been punched by a monkey?
“Watch out!”
And then they went like this.
They screamed: “That’s a monkey.”
I was in the ring. I heard it.
And then after it was over, they all waited,
these followers of Hitler’s supposed successor.
They wanted to test me, to see if I was a real boxer.
But my colleagues who had come with me from Berlin heard them
and heard how they were setting it up and they said:
“Ibraimo, stay with us, come with us.”
And they took me by the arm like this, and we left, the bus was already there
and then the trainer said: “He’s with us!”