The son of a woman who was left paralyzed and lost her ability to speak after having her throat slashed by an Afghan refugee in Germany last year has raised more than €175,000 for her rehabilitation.
In September last year, 58-year-old Regina Gerken — who had spent much of her life maintaining neglected green spaces in Berlin and helping refugees to learn German — was attacked from behind by Abdul Malik H, 29, and stabbed in the neck several times.
She survived the attack but was left with irreversible damage after suffering a cerebral infarction which caused her to lose the ability to speak.
The shocking attack, which Remix News reported on last year, occurred because he did not believe women should work, according to the police.
Upon his arrest, the Afghan attacker told police after his arrest that he had “sent the victim to paradise.”
Regina now receives rehabilitation therapy at a neuro-rehab clinic in the German capital, learning how to sit, stand, walk, eat and speak, and her son, Amer Hamzeh, launched a GoFundMe crowdfunder to help contribute towards her therapy costs.
“The fanatic, who told the police that he wanted to “send her to paradise” didn’t know that she was busy creating paradise herself. For years, my mother has been busy turning a neglected public space into a blooming garden. He also didn’t know that for the 20 years before that Regina has helped thousands of Lebanese, Syrians, and Palestinians, many of them refugees just like him, learn German and make their way to Germany to study and work,” Hamzeh wrote.
At the time of writing, donations had reached €177,533 from 3,600 individual donations.
“Health insurance only pays for basic therapies, and not always,” her son explained. “However, experts agree that Regina would need significantly more and more specialized therapy to regain her abilities. We will have to pay a lot of it ourselves because the health insurance does not cover it, but we want to give my mother back as much as possible of what was taken from her,” he added.
In an update on the crowdfunder, Hamzeh revealed that his mother will travel to Hamburg next week for three weeks of intensive language training with a renowned language therapist.
“Thanks to you, we won’t have to worry about how to finance travel, accommodation, and therapy,” he added, offering his gratitude to all who donated in support of his mother following the heinous attack.
Despite the fact that the migrant directly targeted a woman based on her gender, the attack received little coverage in the German left-wing media or from the country’s high-profile feminists.
