A Syrian refugee living in Berlin is feeding the country’s homeless to “give something back to German people.”
Once a week, Alex Assali sets up a food station where he dishes out warm meals to the city’s homeless to “give something back to the people who helped us,” according to a sign which hangs from his mobile food station.
As The Telegraph reports, Assali fled from Damascus in 2007 after posting online messages critical of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Assali arrived in Berlin in 2014 after spending time in Libya.
Since August, the man has set up a table, with pots of warm food, outside of Alexanderplatz station where he feeds about 100 disadvantaged people.
A photo of Assali dishing out food over the weekend has gone viral.
The image shows the cook dressed in a blazer, standing behind a folding table preparing food in two large kitchen pots, next to a big loaf of bread.
“Give something back to German people,” reads a sign hanging from the yellow table.
A second sign states that Assali is part of a Christian Syrian project to help those in need.
“We are not consumer people but we are people who love tender,” the sign reads. “We want to be a positive part in the German community.”
An acquaintance of Assali posted the image on Facebook with a message saying they were both overwhelmed by the response.
“He really has lost everything; he had to leave his family back in Syria because people wanted to kill him,” Tabea Bü wrote in the message, as translated by The Telegraph.
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