Tag Archives: Germany

#Escape from your country? #BerlinWall #EastGermany

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EscapeCan you think of any good reason to escape from your country? I am not talking about criminal acts causing you to hide from being caught or trying to avoid punishment. No, I am talking about not being able to breathe anymore, not being able to talk openly, always being afraid to say the wrong thing, even to your own family.

About 60.000 people escaped almost monthly from East Germany to the West for many years. A number of them lost their lives when shot by other East Germans, maybe their brothers, cousins, or friends, – boys who had grown up since the war ended in 1945 and became part of the East German Police Force.

The day I escaped, it was October 5th 1955, over 16.000 registered in the West. In my case, it was West Berlin. The two shots fired after me could very easily have hit me but I like to believe the young police man missed on purpose. Maybe he lost his life because of it. Their order was to “shoot to kill.” Maybe he was severely punished. Maybe he could prove that he did NOT do it on purpose. Two Berliner men pulled me into a moving train. Luckily the train was not stopped as a result of my escape.

image2-002-1To stop the exodus the “Berlin Wall” had been built over night August 13th 1961. Nobody, absolutely nobody, knew about it and people wonder to this day how the government could have organized it. The Wall went straight down the middle of streets for some kilometers. Families or friends were cut off from each other. If you had been visiting in either East or West Berlin, maybe just across the street, you were stuck, you could not return. Days later the people living in the houses along the wall on the eastern side were evacuated and all the windows bricked up. The rest of the country was fenced in with miles and miles of barbed wire and a wide strip of mined no-mans-land. In order to see footsteps another wide strip of raked sand was added later. Towers for sharp shooters were built. East Germany became a large prison with life going on as if everything was Berlin Wall-2all right. But nothing was all right. People risked their life by building tunnels, balloons, micro-aircraft, even shooting wires across a street and became escape artists above the search lights. One young police man even stole an armored police truck and made it across the border and, despite being wounded and finding himself in a hospital bed he was happy because he made it! According to reports thousands got shot, many were wounded but they just did not give up trying to reach what is not even fully appreciated by the populace of western countries: Freedom.

Have you ever thought of freedom? What freedom means, to you or your family, your friends? It is something we don’t think about because it is something we take for granted.

70th Anniversary – Dresden Bombing

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View from City Hall after the raid

View from City Hall after the raid

Sure I was aware of the Dresden bombing but I had no idea what the city looked like after the fact – http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31452693

I must say after reading this account from the BBC I am totally flabbergasted.

E – Day?

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No idea what “E – Day” is? For me it is a very special day in my life: Emigration Day.

I stepped into an airplane at the Frankfurt Airport. The plane lifted off and I saw the fields of Germany, seemingly laid out with a giant ruler getting smaller and smaller, the many little villages with the steepled church towers always right in the middle of the surrounding houses placed like toys out of building box. I saw the endless grey line of the autobahn reaching out through endless forests finally giving way to floating clouds and then there was nothing. We were “above it all”. Above the Earth! I had left the land of my ancestors. I was on the way to a new life on a different continent. I had escaped all my troubles I thought… it is hard if not impossible to explain my feelings: Weightless? Floating like a feather in the wind? It had nothing to do with FLYING; – no, I am talking about myself: my emotions, my feelings, even my physical body. When I drifted off into semi-consciousness I had an out-of-body experience: I had no emotions, I had no feelings and I had no physical body. I looked down on myself sitting in the airplane, eyes closed with a crease between the eyebrows, hands folded in the lap. And all of a sudden a desperate small voice woke me up and brought me back to reality:

“Lady, can I have a drink?” My new daughter. The four year old girl cuddled next to me knew I did not speak much English. She did not want to wake up her “new mommy”. She was calling the stewardess. She couldn’t sleep. Her dad was waiting in Vancouver. She was like a pebble on the beach, rolled around by wind and waves. Her mother had left her. For several years she had lived with her dad in room and board, for the last nearly three months with her paternal grandparents in Germany. When I came “home” on weekends she wouldn’t let go of my hand. She was desperate for motherly love and would proudly introduce me to anybody who would stop by: “My new mommy!”

It was December 13th 1963. We had a refueling stop at the International Airport Keflavik in Reykjavik, Iceland. Holding her little hand tightly in mine we seemed the only people on the planet. We walked the frozen grassy airfield for almost an hour before they let us board again and start the long flight over the green fields and mountains of Iceland and the white icy peaks of Greenland occasionally visible through the clouds towards North America.

That’s when I learned that Iceland is green and Greenland is white! I have looked down on Greenland many times thereafter and it always irked me that I did not see any green…but incredibly beautiful white peaks and valleys. It’s hard to believe that there are places for people to live and to make a living.

Lions Gate cropped

Heading towards Lions Gate Bridge

December 14th: One of the most special days of my life: Arrival in Canada. The Vancouver International Airport was a shadow of what it is today. The Vancouver Hotel was the highest building in the city. Halfway across the Lions Gate Bridge my Canadian Husband asked me: “Well? What do you think?”

“This place is too beautiful to live here. It is more like a holiday destination…”

He laughed: “You better get used to it. This is where you will live.” Five months later we moved to Winnipeg and while driving through the Rockies my little girl asked her dad: “Why is mom crying so much?”

And now my friends, I have given away part of the sequel to “We Don’t Talk About That”!

It would make sense for you to read that book to understand WHAT it was that drove me to leave the land of my ancestors, marry a pen friend and have an ‘instant family’. At one point in “We Don’t Talk About That” I had told my parents: “That’s what I want, I want ‘later children’– because neighbours had mentioned that ‘later children’ are easier when my third sister was born. She had been such a quiet, easy going kid.

E – Day. 14th of December is my E-Day. It’s also my second sister’s birthday and the birthday of her first daughter, – but for me, the 14th of December is and always will be like

“MY NEW BIRTHDAY”.

Angela Merkel- most powerful woman? #Merkel #Germany

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Angela Merkel through the years

Angela Merkel through the years

Reading this article gave me a whole new perspective looking at or listening to what this woman who doesn’t care for the “lime light” has to say on the world stage. I knew that her father was a pastor and that they lived in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I didn’t know that they actually lived in Hamburg when her father decided to take over a post in East Germany where the churches were not favored by the Politicians. I didn’t know that her mother was an English teacher and I had forgotten that Angela graduated in Quantum Chemistry and even has a doctorate. I also didn’t know that she had something with me in common: she was bullied and teased in her young years. I remember my feelings of disbelieve when I heard years ago that she had been elected German Chancellor. She had the guts to say “no” to Obama when he requested something she felt was not appropriate and I admired her for saying the things she did to Putin and his admiration for her: “The first head of State that I can converse with in my mother tongue!” And I was surprised to learn that Putin even speaks better German than Angela Merkel speaks Russian.

The article is not just of her even if she is in the center of it. The writer provides a really good overview of the development of and Germany’s effect on Europe and how she dealt with the problems and leaders of all the powerful states. I am tempted to tell you more – but read it for yourself! It’s lengthy but incredibly interesting. I want to read it again.

George Packer, the writer did more than his homework – thank you so much. Your write-up is better than a history book – because it puts your reader directly into the story.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/01/quiet-german

 

J.F.Kennedy Assassination #JFK #Kennedy

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November 22nd 1963 12.30 PM:

J F K with Haile Selassie in Washington DC, 1st Oct, 1963

J F K with Haile Selassie in Washington DC, 1st Oct, 1963

It is almost impossible to believe that 51 years have gone by since the world was rocked by the assassination of the 35th President of the United States. J.F.Kennedy was smiling at the people lined up along the road. He was riding in an open car with his beautiful wife Jackie beside him passing through the Dealey Plaza in Dallas and hundreds of onlookers saw him collapse suddenly after a couple of shots were fired. Hundreds of theories and many inquiries into his death were never resolved; the why and by whom. Was it the lone shooter Harvey Lee Oswald who was originally arrested for shooting the officer J.D. Tippit and then was, himself, shot within two days, or was it an international plot, or a group of people? There are no final answers to the question to this very day.

Four other Presidents have been shot before J.F. Kennedy:

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, James Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901 and Warren G. Harding in 1923. Did you know that shooting an American President was not a Federal Offence until 1965?

Do you remember where you were when J.F.K. was shot? Do you remember what and how you felt when you heard the news? I do: I was having breakfast in a small restaurant in Saarbruecken/Germany and the next bite literally got stuck in my throat. I never finished my meal. An unreal silence enveloped everybody with only the news reporter’s announcements on the radio searing through to our brains. We could not understand or accept what was being said. What? Why? For heaven’s sake, why? Many people in the restaurant started crying. It was as if everybody’s best friend had suddenly been killed. Nobody left, everybody was sitting as if nailed to their chairs for hours.

I remember JFK’s famous exclamation during a speech in Berlin: “Ich bin ein Berliner!” It wasn’t just the Berliners who loved him for it, – the Berliners who suffered under tight restrictions living in a divided city, the Berliners who remembered the blockade of their city by the Eastern block and Western planes landing every few minutes at the inner city Airport Tempelhof to bring not only food but fuel and everything else the city needed to function. It was the Americans who kept the western “sectors” of Berlin alive. Otherwise they would have had no choice but to succumb to the Communist pressure and become part of the Eastern Block. After all, Berlin was an “Island” within East Germany. J.F.Kennedy stood for the dream that was ‘America’ – and that word and everything associated with it spelled “Freedom”.

And now this man, the President of America, had been shot. This man was no more. The western world had lost a great man, loved and admired and now mourned by millions…Who would forget the photograph of the small little son who stood at attention and paid his respect to his dad when the coffin was carried by?

Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when it happened? Please add your remarks and/or comments.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall #BerlinWall

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Berlin WallIt was in 1968 that my father and I had a chance to talk about his last will and testament. He lived in East Germany, I lived in Canada. East Germany was a communist country with strongly fortified borders, rows of barbed wire fences, mine fields in front of those and guard towers with sharp shooters present around the clock. Within the country you could move freely as long as you always registered with the police after arrival when visiting relatives in a different city for more than a few days. You also had to de-register when you left and register again when you came back to your permanent home. It was practically impossible to get a visa to visit relatives in West Germany – unless you were a 65 year old male, or 60 if you were female. Younger people were kept “in” since too many had escaped before the Berlin Wall had been built. Now, at the end of the sixties older people had a chance; – if they didn’t come back, no loss and one person less to pay a pension to.

Father would never get a visa for Canada but he got one to visit his second daughter, my sister in Hamburg, West Germany. I sent a flight ticket to her, she got him a West German passport in exchange for his East German one and he came to Winnipeg for three glorious weeks. He asked “Wouldn’t it be better to take the train from Hamburg to Frankfurt instead of flying? I am afraid I’ll be late and then I’ll have to hang on to the straps and stand all the way to Canada.”

We talked about a will. He did not have one since he did not know how to do it. His youngest daughter stull lived in East Germany close to them, one daughter lived in Hamburg and I, his oldest, lived in Canada. I tried to convince him to leave everything to the youngest since she would be the one to look after my parents when they were getting on and needed help. He thought it not fair and thought we, the two in the “West”, should have something as well.

“Dad, we don’t need it. We are both established and we couldn’t spend it anyway.”

Eastern money had to stay in East Germany. Even if we came to visit we had to exchange West money one to one for each day we stayed there, so any inheritance would be useless.

With a guileful expression he looked at me and whispered ironically: “My girl, you will see, it will change one day. The way things are going at home can’t go on. Sooner or later the wall will come down.”

“Dream on, Dad that will never happen.” I did not believe him. But I did convince him to make a will leaving me out and my sister in Hamburg agreed to it as well. He never felt comfortable about it but eventually he did leave us out of his will.

On the evening of November 9th I was resting on my couch in my cozy home in Vancouver reading and listening to a Mozart concert when my phone rang. It was my son:

“Mom, do you have the TV on? They are dancing on the Berlin Wall! Mom, hurry – switch your TV on, this is history in the making. You ought to see this! The East German Police have put their guns down, hundreds of thousands are streaming through Check Point Charley into West Berlin, people are hugging and kissing, dancing and singing and drinking champagne, they are hacking away at the wall, Mom, you ought to see this!”

My son in Winnipeg and I in Vancouver, connected by the telephone, sat up long into the night, ran up a huge phone bill, but it did not matter. The wall was coming down! The wall that had divided thousands of families for nearly thirty years, ours included. We shared these first hours and laughed and cried. I had taken him to Berlin when he was about twelve years old and we had looked over the wall from a platform built on the west side, almost twenty years hence.

My father had been right. Oh, how I wish he could have lived to see the day, I know that his tears would not have stopped running down his beloved face. He died in 1983, six years too soon.

Now we are close to November 9th, 2014 celebrating:

“Twenty-five year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

 

 

 

Escape to West Berlin #Escape #EastGermany

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The 5th of October 19Escape55 changed my life forever. How? Let me tell you. I lived in East Germany.

I was a Phys Ed teacher. I loved my job and the school principal repeatedly reminded me to join the SED, the communist party. “How can you be a teacher if you are not able to pass on the ideology of communism to your students?” Without being a member you had no chance for advancement and risked your job security. But so far I had resisted the pressure.

On October 4th something drastic happened which drove me to the decision to leave East Germany like so many thousands of others were doing. Early the next morning I took the train to Berlin. Just outside Berlin proper, in Bernau, all the passengers had to leave the train, line up at a table to have passports checked by police and then continue on with the S-Bahn (city train) to the inner city. The “Wall” had not been built yet so the city train still stopped at some West Berlin stations. Waiting for my passport to be checked, the city train pulled in. When it started moving again I lost my nerve and started running towards it. The police had shooting orders for people trying to escape. Two shots were fired. They missed, either by accident or by design. We will never know. If witnesses claimed they missed on purpose the shooter would be severely punished, put in jail or even shot. Two Berliner men held the automatically closing train doors open and pulled me into the last wagon. I expected the train to be stopped…..

Those two Berliners told me to get out at the next station which happened to be in the “West Sector”. I had to wait for another train, one not going through the “East Sector”, to Marienfelde. This was the place where one had to register in West Germany. I was thunderstruck by the long line-up of people; everybody who had escaped this day was in line yet it was still only very early in the afternoon. Most had no luggage at all or only a small bag, some didn’t even have jackets or coats. I moved forward with a young dental assistant, a nice girl who hoped to be sent to the Black Forest since she had relatives there. I had no idea where I would end up. We stuck together and were given a bunk bed in a room with only five other bunk beds. I took the upper one and kept my coat on top of my blanket and my shoes close to the wall. We had been warned to look after our few belongings because things “disappeared”. Most other rooms had fifteen or more bunk beds. We felt so very lucky. But don’t even ask about bathrooms or showers, – it was all very well organised but very simple. There was an air of relief, but not much talking. After our experiences in East Germany nobody trusted anybody. We were afraid to say anything. What if the Russians were coming?

Most girls in our room were “processed” as it was called within a few days. Everyday new ones were occupying the beds. I was the only one kept there for three weeks. We had been told that on Oct. 5th over 16.000 people had escaped, not all through Berlin though. I was repeatedly interviewed by the Americans, the English and the French officers but in the end I could not tell them more than I already had. Actually, through their questions I learned about military installations on the Island of Ruegen I had not even imagined. Finally they decided to fly me out to Hannover while my final destination was supposed to be Dortmund. My first flight was not exactly a flight into the sunset but what all of us thought of as FREEDOM. New challenges were awaiting me in the “golden West” as we “easties” called it.

You want to know what happened on October 4th that drove me to leave my family, my hometown, the job I enjoyed, my beloved boat and all my kayaking buddies? For that, dear reader, you’ll have to read my book We Don’t Talk About That…

Book Reading – Parksville #WeDontTalkAboutThat

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Book reading ParksvilleDespite the very rainy weather we had a good gathering in the Council Chambers at Parksville Library today. One lady who came to hear what I had to say remembered my home town, Stresow, where I spent my childhood and, in further discussion, it became evident that she came from the very same town where my father was born. What a small world it is. She confided that she had escaped rape by having short hair and dressing as a boy.

Book Reading Today #WeDontTalkAboutThat

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Another pleasant evening with 23 people this time at the Nanaimo North Library for a book reading with some interesting questions and discussion. One lady bought a copy yesterday and read the whole book overnight in order to be informed when she came to the book reading today – another case of “could not put it down”! So many people wondering when the next part of my life will be revealed. Many thanks to Stephen Warren and Darby Love from VIRL who helped to make this event possible.

Refresh – Four Minutes of Fame #WeDontTalkAboutThat

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The YouTube link originally posted for this blog post was changed. The link below is now the correct path to the video.

Red light, interview in progress.

Red light, interview in progress.

We all have our moment in the sun. I had all of 4 minutes under the bright lights and in front of the TV cameras last week. Check out The Show on YouTube and scroll forward to 29:15 for my interview about upcoming book signings and book readings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onwpKtKENSM&feature=youtu.be