LETSCHIN, GERMANY - OCTOBER 09: Kurdish Syrian asylum-applicants Mohamed Ali Hussein ((L), 19, and his cousin Sinjar Hussein, 34, watch an Al-Jazeera news broadcast in Arabic in the room they share at the asylum-applicants' shelter that is their home in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The cousins arrived in Germany via Romania and the Balkans, though because Romanian authorities initially registered and fingerprinted them there, Mohamed and Sinjar have sought legal help from lawyers in Berlin in order to be allowed to apply for asylum in Germany. The cousins told of bad experiences in Romania, where they said police beat them. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity. Vossberg village is located in rural eastern Germany close to the border to Poland, and unlike shelters in southeastern Germany, it has experienced no incidents of right-wing animosity from locals, something an ASB spokesman attributes to strong cooperation between the municipality, schools and citizens' groups and an effective information campaign to educate locals about the newcomers. Germany has been inundated with hundreds of thousands of asylum applicants this year and is struggling to accommodate them. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
