Harassed on the Subway, and No One Stepped In

Hi, friends. Of course we've been following the “Stadtbild” (“cityscape”) debate sparked by the German chancellor's comments about migrants and city life, and of course we have an opinion. There are already some very good, very well-informed responses out there, and we've reposted a few of them on our social media channels.

My family lives in Berlin, and if you live and grow up in Berlin, you come into contact with all kinds of people every single day. The classrooms, the sports clubs, the doctors' offices, the buses, the daycare groups: everywhere you look, people with different skin colors from different countries.

My family lives in Berlin, and if you live and grow up in Berlin, you come into contact with all kinds of people every single day. The classrooms, the sports clubs, the doctors' offices, the buses, the daycare groups: everywhere you look, people with different skin colors from different countries. One of my son's best friends fled Iraq with his family as a baby. His parents have jobs, his older siblings finished vocational training and are working, and a few weeks ago the whole family got their German passports.

I can't even imagine how that family must feel hearing what Friedrich Merz said. Didn't Friedrich Merz say he wanted to be the chancellor for everyone? How awful it must be to know that people see you as a nuisance.

Between the lines, the chancellor's remarks suggest that women (and our daughters) are constantly being harassed by immigrants. Yes, I've had some lousy encounters with immigrant men myself. Just like I've had lousy encounters with German men, younger men, older men. With drunk men, with men on their own, with men in groups. I honestly don't know a single woman who has never been sexually harassed.

So why am I weighing in on this debate after all? Because last week, my 14-year-old daughter was harassed on the subway. It was 7:30 in the morning, the car was packed with people on their way to work, and a young man sat down uncomfortably close to her and started talking at her and grilling her with questions. By the way, he wasn't an immigrant or the child of immigrants. When she didn't engage, he tried to touch her stomach and her chest. She screamed at him and slapped his hands away.

He cursed at her and got off the train. But what makes me at least as angry as the fact that in 2025 there are still young men who think they have the right to put their hands on girls is this: NOBODY helped my daughter. Nobody stepped in when he crowded up against her and it was obvious she was uncomfortable. Nobody asked her if she needed help while he rambled at her and tried to grab her. A 14-year-old was completely on her own. Even after she screamed at him, no one reacted.

What we should be talking about instead

Instead of arguing about the cityscape, we need to talk about the men who don't know any boundaries, who think they can behave however they want. And we need to talk about why a bunch of grown adults would rather stare at the floor or out the window than step up when a child is in trouble. Both things leave me speechless, because it doesn't feel good to be unable to tell my daughter, after something like this, that it will never happen again. Instead, the truth is that this kind of thing will probably keep happening to her, at the hands of men, for the rest of her life…

Let me be clear: I don't care where someone comes from or what they look like, as long as they behave decently. Nobody gets to harass women, and nobody gets to look away when it happens.