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Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall
Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall
Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall
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Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall

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In this illuminating and deeply moving memoir, a former American military intelligence officer goes beyond traditional Cold War espionage tales to tell the true story of her family—of five women separated by the Iron Curtain for more than forty years, and their miraculous reunion after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Forty Autumns makes visceral the pain and longing of one family forced to live apart in a world divided by two. At twenty, Hanna escaped from East to West Germany. But the price of freedom—leaving behind her parents, eight siblings, and family home—was heartbreaking. Uprooted, Hanna eventually moved to America, where she settled down with her husband and had children of her own.

Growing up near Washington, D.C., Hanna’s daughter, Nina Willner became the first female Army Intelligence Officer to lead sensitive intelligence operations in East Berlin at the height of the Cold War. Though only a few miles separated American Nina and her German relatives—grandmother Oma, Aunt Heidi, and cousin, Cordula, a member of the East German Olympic training team—a bitter political war kept them apart.

In Forty Autumns, Nina recounts her family’s story—five ordinary lives buffeted by circumstances beyond their control. She takes us deep into the tumultuous and terrifying world of East Germany under Communist rule, revealing both the cruel reality her relatives endured and her own experiences as an intelligence officer, running secret operations behind the Berlin Wall that put her life at risk.

A personal look at a tenuous era that divided a city and a nation, and continues to haunt us, Forty Autumns is an intimate and beautifully written story of courage, resilience, and love—of five women whose spirits could not be broken, and who fought to preserve what matters most: family.

Forty Autumns is illustrated with dozens of black-and-white and color photographs.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateOct 4, 2016
ISBN9780062410337
Author

Nina Willner

Nina Willner is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer who served in Berlin during the Cold War. Following a career in intelligence, Nina worked in Moscow, Minsk, and Prague promoting human rights, children’s causes, and the rule of law for the U.S. government, nonprofit organizations, and a variety of charities. She currently lives in Istanbul, Turkey. Forty Autumns is her first book.

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Rating: 4.2844038899082575 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I was interested in this book initially because my parents took me to Germany where my father was stationed with the Army in 1954 - 1955 (not sure of actual dates). I was 1 or 2 at the time. The timeline of the events that happened in my lifetime was interesting and a bit eye opening in today’s cultural climate.This is a very interesting read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Under East Germany's hardline Communist government, the lives of ordinary citizens were bleak. Anyone could be a Stasi informer, and tight family bonds were the only ones that could be trusted. In Forty Autumns, former U.S. Army intelligence officer Nina Willmer describes how the members her mother's family (her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins) survived from the end of WWII to the collapse of the Berlin wall with their spirits and their dignity still intact. Not that it was ever easy. The family endured long years of separation from beloved oldest daughter Hanna (Nina's mother), who defected to the West and married an American. Moreover, the tension of going along to get along under the Communist regime gave Willmer's headmaster grandfather a nervous breakdown. And Willmer's cousin Cordula had to train at almost a superhuman level to keep her place as a member of East Germany's elite swim team.This is a sad, but eye-opening look at everyday lives behind the Iron Curtain. I highly recommend it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I absolutely LOVED this book. The author's writing is superb. She intersperses the story of her family and the events going on at the time in Germany and throughout the region. The book also contains several black and white photos and several pages of color photos in the middle. Ms. Willner kept me on edge all through the book as I rapidly read to learn the fate of the remainder of her family. I was horrified at what went on behind the Berlin Wall and amazed at how the people kept going day after day. It was so well written I often forgot I was reading about a real family.Nina's mother was the oldest daughter and the only family member to escape from East Germany. Years would go by with an occasional letter arriving at its intended destination. East Berliners were totally shielded from news of the West. Anyone interested in history should definitely read this book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excellent story about on large family growing up in E Germany from 1945, through a brief U.S. Occupation, to 45+ years under Soviet Union control.The story focuses on Hanna, who escaped E Germany, was forced to go back, and 2 years later escaped for good. It details the ramifications this had on the rest of the family, until the Berlin Wall came down.The story follows Hanna, as she settles first in west Germany and then in America, her children as well as all of Hanna's brothers and sisters who she left behind.Any time people casually throw around terms like dictator, fascism, totalitarian, in regards to politicians in America just display their complete ignorance of what these words mean, and what it is like to live in such a situation.The East German government were horrible evil people, who destroyed their population all for the sake of power.This book details what happened if you stood up and said anything.This is an outstanding, fantastic book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I almost didn't read this one, almost. It was due back at the library and quite lengthy, didn't know if I could fit it in, but three of my trusted friends on here rated it highly, so I thought I would just start it and see if I connected with the story. Obviously I did, finished in a few days, and was so glad I opened the cover.I was so young, during the Cold War, remember the fear of my parents, vaguely remember duck and cover, do vividly remember the air raids sirens and having to leave my desk to line up in the hallway, quietly, for some reason, they good sister thought if we were quiet and in a perfect line, we would be saved. I remember watching the the Berlin Wall coming down and the people rushing through. But those were pictures on television, this book is an actual telling of what it was like to live in East Germany, to have to watch everything one said and did. Centered on a large family, one whose daughter at the age of 17, escapes to, West Germany. From then on they would be a family divided, with little contact, always wondering and hoping when they would get word, meet again. I learned more from this book, not just about country but other things that were going on in the world, communism and how it eventually ended, than I ever did in school. It is however, the personal perspective, this book written by a granddaughter in the family, a woman who was in Army intelligence that made this a five star read for me. For the Oma and Opal in the story, the families matriarch and patriarch, I have the utmost respect. Making a family a port in the storm, family first, in a country that stressed loyalty to the state first, was an amazing and enviable accomplishment.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A riveting page-turner. This book keeps me up late at night. Nina Willner is a master storyteller. I had no idea how bad it was in East Germany after WWII.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The author had me at the second paragraph, "I felt alone and left out. I looked at them, then panned to the empty chair next to my desk, which got me wondering, where were my grandparents?" This is a wonderful read, full of lessons for all of us today. Thank you to Harper Collins Publishers and librarything.com for a copy of this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I had not previously read anything about East Germany after WWII, and I learned a great deal. The family story is indeed interesting, but I found the history involved even more so. You find yourself asking, "How did this ever happen?" and wondering what we can do to keep it from happening again. Well written and thought provoking.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a fascinating look at two families on both sides of the Berlin Wall during the Cold War. I really liked this book - it had a lot of historical detail, but it wasn't dry or boring. It's not typical that I'll read a non-fiction book all in two days, but this one did it for me.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    a look at life under a dictatorship, this time East Germany, maybe foreshadowing life to come in the good ol' USA once it's made great again.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I received this book through the Early Reviewers program.This is the story of a family split apart by the closing off of East Germany. I knew some of the bare bones of East Germany splitting off after World War II. I can vividly remember the pictures of the Berlin Wall being torn down. In between, about the only thing I knew about East Germany was through their athletes at the Olympics.Forty Autumns filled the gaps in my knowledge. The story of the author's family was well written. It was enjoyable to read even though the subject matter was not always pleasant. I enjoyed learning about her family and through them the story of East Germany. I highly recommend this book to anyone with a slight curiosity about the Cold War years.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I have been eyeing this book for about a month. I have wanted to check it out. I finally got the chance to. This book is way better then I imagined it to be. Sometimes I go into a nonfiction or memoir looking for the history and connection with the people. I experienced this while reading this book. Instantly, I felt that connection with Oma, Opa, Hanna, and Heidi to name a few. Unless you really lived divided behind the "Iron Curtain" aka Great Wall; you have no idea what freedom, loss of family, and fear is all about. While I was lucky enough to have been adopted by my parents in the US, I might have gotten to understand a little more what it would have been like had I not been adopted. I was born in South Korea. I was so intertwined with everyone that when the Wall came down, I almost cried when Heidi and her husband traveled into West Germany and really felt true freedom. This book reminds us of the past. Yet, it also teaches us to be grateful for what we have and the important things in life. A treasure of a read!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book absolutely entranced me. It is as good a memoir as a tome to make the history of the Cold War home to many younger or other people who were not exposed to the happenings of the Cold War. I give the book 5 stars!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a beautiful story. It was a early reviewer freebie, thank you.If you want to know (albeit only slightly since you most likely havent worn their shoes) what it was like for many German families after East Germany was formed post WWII, read this book. It's not just about the hardships the East Germans had to endure to survive in their police state but the separation of families once the Wall was up.I lived in West Germany during the 60's and 70's and I travelled into East Germany st Checkpoint Charlie- I can still remember what a difference there was from the happy, contented West Berliners and the drab, nonsmiling East Berliners. I was shocked that in such a short stretch of distance there could be such a difference but I never truly understood the real impact of whstthst wall did to so many families.This is so well written- I almost think it should be a must read in high school since lest we forget because for many of the young this post-wat time is just history.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very interesting perspective from a young girl living in Berlin after WWII. Most stories of Germany occur during the war. It was an eye opener to see how East Belin was so different from West Berlin and how the Russian occupiers treated the German citizens. They were similar to the Nazis. The story showed how hard life was in E Belin and why so many tried to escape to the West. There was starvation and tortures. How lucky for those who escaped and started a new life in the West. Some of them coming to America. But there was also sadness from leaving their family and the only home they ever knew. I never realized what a wonderful day it was when the Berlin wall came down.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I received this book as an ARC through LibraryThing.com I found it very interesting and informative. Willner give much history of East Germany in short little blasts intermingled with the story of the family. The family story is frightening to us living in freedom our whole lives. But you cheer for them and are scared for them. You admire their strength in escaping and in remaining behind the Iron Curtain and all that entailed for over forth years.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a first for me: a book about the trials and tribulations of a family that closed one day in the U.S. sector of defeated Germany and began the next in the USSR sector, what became East Germany. The characters are fairly well defined. The principle characters are relatives of the author which suggests a tempering but it is not troublesome. The struggles about trying to maintain contact are covered with a low hum that leaps to crescendo when the rare physical contacts occur. One member of this large family makes three escape attempts, finally staying in the west on the third try (she had managed it twice before but returned once due to confusion and the other to protect her family). But because of the one defection, the position of the family steadily degrades. It is not possible to evaluate the passions of the family members because of the incredible story of simple existence. This is an excellent book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Heart warming story about family ties during the Cold War. Provides historical insights while focusing on the human element of this time period.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Forty Autumns, Nina Willner, author; Cassandra Campbell, narratorNina Willner has done a masterful job of bringing, not only the plight of her own family to life, behind The Iron Curtain, but also the history of the decades of The Cold War. What could have been written drily, almost as a text, was instead written with so much compassion, as it presents the facts, that it reads smoothly, almost like a novel. From the moment I met Oma and Opa, I was captivated, but then, I am also called Oma.After WWII ended, with her husband and son still not home from the front, Oma, pregnant with her seventh child as Russia invaded their space, replacing the Americans, feared for her daughter Hanna’s safety. Thus, Hanna’s first escape from East Germany was initiated by her mother, before the American soldiers left. Oma knew that the Russians had a reputation for looting and raping the women. She tried to save Hanna from such a fate, but Hanna did not want to leave her mother; although safe with American soldiers, she resisted and returned home, foiling her mother’s plan to save her. After that, it was impossible for the family to support Hanna’s effort to escape again, without facing punishment. They actually had to actively thwart her attempts. As the Soviet Union’s stranglehold tightened, Hanna regretted her return home and renewed her own effort to escape. Just a teenager, she engaged the help of an uncle to try to escape from East Germany. Unsuccessful attempts led to the third, which was the charm. She escaped, but unfortunately, it caused repercussions for her family. They now had a mark against their name and were watched and prevented from rising from their low station in life. They were a risk to the Soviet Union’s efforts to brainwash the people. Hanna, however, found freedom, love, a family, and eventually a life in America, but the life of her family in East Germany was the opposite. It was one of deprivation and fear, as they were constantly under the watchful eye of someone. Defiance was impossible. Those who tried it suffered the consequences. Boundaries were firm, rules were strict, threats against those who resisted proliferated. Although the Soviets said they came in peace, it was not their intention. They came to establish control over the population. Their food and property were confiscated. They were constantly harassed and observed to see if they broke any rules. Everyone was encouraged to turn in traitors who did not support the Communist regime. Schools indoctrinated the students with propaganda, making them think that the West was evil. They had no way to know otherwise, to see how the others lived, until decades later. One could not help feeling pain and concern for the plight of those trapped behind the iron curtain, but also relief that Hanna had the courage to run, and succeeded, so that this story could finally be told; the onion is peeled back, layer upon layer, so that the reader experiences the slow loss of their independence and rights, their imprisonment behind a wall that separated friends and families for decades. Slowly, though, the Germans acquiesced to Soviet rule. In order to survive, they began to support the Soviets, began to work for them and spout their doctrine, teaching it in their schools and supporting the government’s effort to make them good communists, in much the same way they supported Hitler. I had some conflicted feelings as I read about their humiliation and captivity. I am, as a Jew, perhaps more aware of the humiliation and worse, that the Germans had inflicted on so many millions of innocent victims, as many Germans proclaimed their ignorance of events, even though the vast majority supported Hitler.As life goes on for the family, the reader sees two parallel lifelines, one in Germany as the family becomes involved in communist life, some of them more than others, as they grow more and more disappointed with their treatment, but find ways to thrive, as they support their government, enter their armed service, even one, Cordula, competing in the Olympics for East Germany, and then, miraculously for the once again unified Germany. The other is their counterpart in America, the author and her family who are doing the same. From captive to joining the armed forces, from freedom fighter to spy, Hanna, Eddie and Tina rise above and beyond their own expectations. I had always found it difficult to understand how so many people could willingly be trapped behind an invisible wall, which soon became a real one. I had found it hard to understand how anyone could possibly support such an autocratic regime without mounting a strong resistance, but then there surely was the fatigue of war to hold them back and the hope that things would get better. The author has made it clear that they had no choice because of the threats and punishments actually carried out when someone betrayed this new government’s rules. A generation of children were brainwashed to become Communists, yet still, some defied the government, risked their lives and rebelled. Some lucky ones escaped, some less lucky, did not. Many died trying to escape to free countries. This book enlightens the reader about how important freedom is, especially once you lose it. Opa, who had fought in both major wars for Germany, in typical Germanic fashion, demanded obedience and respect for their conquerors. He hoped in that way to keep his family safe. Instead he imprisoned them, only to realize too late, if at all.It is important to have a print copy also, if you are listening to an audio of this book, because although the narrator is very good, the author has thoughtfully provided a map showing the area of the Iron Curtain, East and West Berlin and a family and historical chronology which is very helpful. It kept me on track and thoroughly engaged even with the extensive amount of information offered. The amount of work that the author put into this extraordinary memoir is outstanding. She has presented a coherent picture of what took place after WWII ended, right up to and beyond the fall of the wall, following her family’s current situation.The agreement that gave the Soviet Union so much control. as part of the spoils of war, condemned millions to live under an autocratic government, the likes of which had just been defeated. After such a war, it was hard to believe that so little was learned about human rights by so many. Perhaps this book should be required reading. If we don’t learn from history, we will be doomed to repeat it. One can’t help but wonder how FDR gave so much to the Soviet Union, allowing them to unleash such an evil influence upon so many. One can’t help but be grateful for President Reagan’s effort to “tear down that wall”.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    There are books that are great not because of how they are written, but because of the information they carry, the story they tell, or the truth they convey. Forty Autumns is just such a book, great because it tells a story that is heartbreaking and tragic, because it is true, and because it is a cautionary tale to those who have already forgotten the lessons of history.

    Forty Autumns tells the story of a family divided when Hanna escapes to the west from East Germany just in time to escape the rise of the Berlin Wall. Over the next forty years, she and her family will have only scarce and limited contact, divided by the oppression of the East German communist government. Nina Willner is Hanna's daughter and becomes a US Army intelligence officer.

    I was 12 when the wall came down, and the event was a landmark in my life. I grew up like many waiting for the day when the confrontation between superpowers, the United States and the USSR, would either lead to war or nuclear attack. Then, one day, it all ended, and I don't think anyone saw it coming. It's been over thirty years since the wall came down, and again autocratic forces are rising across the world, Europe is involved in a land war no one thought would ever happen again, and Germany has increased its military spending.

    A whole generation has grown up not knowing what the Iron Curtain was, or how communist leaders oppressed their people, and how badly they wanted the freedom, prosperity, and rights that we seem to take for granted in the west. Willner's story--or stories, really, because it is two stories: one in the west and one in East Germany--shows that contrast in a way I've not seen quite so well demonstrated. Told with clarity and with a tension that kept me turning pages, I found it to be a stirring reminder of all that we have in America, and why liberty and freedom can be so fleeting when taken.

    I will make my daughters read this book someday. Their generation will need this story more than mine, which is only being reminded of things we lived and saw in our own lifetime. My daughter's generation has never seen this, and if they are not careful history will repeat itself again.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is an amazing story of one family’s history in Germany from the end of the Hitler years to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is told by the daughter of the only family member to escape East Germany and made a life for herself, first in West Berlin, and then ultimately in the United States after she married an American serviceman. It is an amazing look at what life was really like in Soviet-controlled East Berlin and East Germany. It is also an amazing feat for one young girl to have the courage to leave her family behind because her desire for independence in the West was so strong! As the author tells the tales of her various family members on both sides of the Wall, she also keeps the reader abreast of what was happening in the world during these various time periods as well. This is a fantastic book for anyone who loves history, tales of people who show amazing courage despite the odds and for anyone who simply loves a good book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is an excellent memoir for high school students and teachers who want to put a face on the brutal oppression of Communist East Germany in the years following World War II. Author Nina Willner’s family was separated by the Iron Curtain for the Forty Autumns of the title, but managed to keep in some contact with one another. At times, even simple letters disappeared, or were read by secret police. She does a good job of describing her relatives’ lives, which were filled with suspicion, food shortages, secret police and prisons. Her grandparents, Opa and Oma, worked hard to feed the family of eight and to keep brothers and sisters united, both within East Germany and with the one daughter (Willner’s mother) who managed to escape. Forty Autumns is strictly focused on life within East Germany and Willner’s family. Readers who want to learn more about the turbulent years of the Cold War in German or American history will have to look elsewhere. I received this book as an early reviewer, and enjoyed it. I would recommend it for people like me who enjoy history through memoirs.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is the story of one family's survival in East Germany from the establishment of the communist regime following WWII through the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Moreover there are comprehensive details about the policies and practices of the allies and the East German government throughout that period. It was very interesting to remember events I experienced throughout my life in comparison to details the author shared about events in the lives of her family in East Germany.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Touching and realistic account of a family's separation in East Germany/Berlin during the Cold War.

Book preview

Forty Autumns - Nina Willner

DEDICATION

for

OMA

EPIGRAPH

Both now and for always, I intend to hold

fast to my belief in the hidden strength of the

human spirit.

—Andrei Sakharov, Russian nuclear physicist and dissident

CONTENTS

Dedication

Epigraph

Family and Historical Chronology

Preface

PART ONE

1. The Handover: End of War (1945)

2. An Iron Curtain Descends: Cold War Begins (1945–1946)

3. If You Want to Get Out, Do It Soon: Close Calls and Escapes (1946–1948)

4. Flight: A Small Suitcase and the Final Escape (August 11, 1948)

PART TWO

5. Two Castles: Out of the Whirlwind (1948–1949)

6. A Sister Born in the East: The Stasi Takes Control (1949–1952)

7. We Want to Be Free: A Workers’ Uprising (1953)

8. The Visit: Sisters Meet (1954)

9. Life Normalizes in a Police State: A Courtship (1955–1957)

10. The Fur Coat: Last Meeting (1958–1959)

PHOTO INSERT

PART THREE

11. A Wall Will Keep the Enemy Out: A Wall to Keep the People In (1960–1961)

12. The Family Wall: Oma’s Faith and Opa’s Defiance (1962–1965)

13. Only Party Members Succeed: We Have Each Other (1966–1969)

14. A Message with No Words: Oma’s Love from Afar (1970–1974)

15. Dissidents and Troublemakers: Opa Committed (1975–1977)

16. A Light Shines: Our Souls Are Free (1977)

17. A Surprise from America: Innocence (1978–1980)

18. Paradise Bungalow: Refuge and Solace (1980–1982)

PART FOUR

19. Assignment: Berlin—Intelligence Operations (1982–1984)

20. Face-to-Face with Honecker: Mission in Ludwigslust (1984–1985)

21. Beyond the Checkpoint: Passage (1985)

22. Imagine: The Road Ahead (1986)

23. Tear Down This Wall: Winds of Change (1987–1988)

24. Gorby, Save Us!: A Nation Crumbles (1989)

25. The World Is Stunned: Schabowski Said We Can!; or, the Wall Falls (November 9, 1989)

26. Dawn: Leaving the East (Autumn 1989)

27. Reunion and Rebirth: Together Again (1990–2013)

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

FAMILY AND HISTORICAL CHRONOLOGY

PREFACE

The [Berlin] Wall is . . . an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.

—President John F. Kennedy

I was five years old when I learned that my grandmother lived behind a curtain. The year was 1966. It was Grandparents Day in kindergarten. In a slow-moving stream of little children holding hands with the elderly, my classmates brought in their grandparents, sweet-looking old people with pates of silky white or graying hair, weathered faces etched in soft creases, twinkly eyes, and benevolent smiles.

I sat at my desk, watching them come in. They greeted the teacher cordially and one another as they shuffled in and made their way into seats set up next to each child’s desk. One at a time, my friends excitedly led their grandparents to the front of the classroom and proudly presented them to the rest of us, introducing them by names like Nana, Poppa, Mimi—which were as foreign to me as they were intoxicating—as their grandparents stood by beaming down at them lovingly. I was entranced by it all. Suddenly I felt alone and left out. I looked at them, then panned to the empty chair next to my desk, which got me wondering, where were my grandparents?

I came home from school that day wanting answers. I bounded through the front door, found my mother in the kitchen, and, without any greeting whatsoever, demanded, Where are my grandparents?

That evening, after dinner, my parents sat me down and told me why I had never met any of my relatives. Speaking in gentle but serious tones, my father, who was of German-Jewish background, explained that his family had all died in the war. In my naïveté, I was unaffected, and turned to my mother, expecting to be disappointed by her as well, but was delighted to learn that her parents and family were alive. She brought out a photograph of her mother and said, This is your Oma.

Oma. She was perfect. She looked exactly like the other grandmothers, but better. She radiated serenity and calm, a winsome, knowing smile gracing her face. Though I couldn’t put it into words then, I was drawn to her pastoral elegance, her humility, her wise, confident disposition as she sat comfortably in an inviting, overstuffed polka-dotted armchair, her body positioned slightly askew, as she looked off to one side.

I stared at the picture for a long time, scanning her from head to toe, even cocked the picture just so, so it felt as if she were smiling directly at me. Despite the fact that I now know the photo was black-and-white, perhaps out of some subconscious desire to bring her instantly to life I saw Oma in color, pale blue eyes beneath those soft, heavy lids and what appeared to me to be blushing, pink cheeks. She had a simple upswept hairdo, the color the same brunette as mine, and wore two pieces of jewelry, a large brooch in the shape of a rose, probably made of gold, I thought, and a small pin that adorned a matronly black dress at the base of her V-neck collar. I imagined myself curling up on her plump, cushy lap and being swept up in an exquisite, warm embrace as she gazed down at me the very same way my classmates’ grandparents had gazed down at them.

Oma, I said aloud, charmed by the singsong ring of her name. Completely satisfied, I looked back up at my mother and asked, When is she coming to visit?

Unfortunately, my mother said, suddenly distracted as she got up to move about the kitchen, Oma could not visit us. Nor could we visit her. She was in a place called East Germany along with the rest of my mother’s family, her sisters, brothers, and everyone else. I didn’t understand, so my mother stopped, perched me on a kitchen stool, crouched down to meet me eye to eye, and explained.

When she was finished, I stared blankly back. Though I realize now that she must have used the term Iron Curtain, the only part of her explanation I understood at that moment was that they were in a place far away, trapped behind a curtain. But this made no sense to me. I tried to comprehend why my mother would allow a sheer cotton panel like the kind I had on my bedroom window, or even heavy draperies like those hanging in our living room, to stand between her and her family. Someone, I thought, simply needed to pull that sheet of fabric to the side and let those poor people out. Someday, she reassured me, we might be able to meet them. Someday indeed. For goodness’ sakes, I thought. It’s just a curtain.

Nina, age five

Courtesy of the Willner family

Oma, behind the Iron Curtain

Courtesy of the Willner family

I went back to school the next day and told my teacher and friends that I too had grandparents, that my Oma was beautiful and, moreover, that I even had people called aunts, uncles, and cousins. My teacher was delighted. When she asked where they lived, I said East Germany, behind a curtain. It was only when I saw her cheery face drop to a somber and sympathetic one that I realized the curtain might be bigger than I had imagined.

It would be several years into my childhood before I would discover that the Iron Curtain was not a simple panel of cloth that could easily be pushed aside by those on either side of it, but rather a symbol of something much bigger and more sinister than anything that childhood innocence could conceive. I would come to learn that my mother’s entire family was indeed trapped inside East Germany and that my mother had escaped.

1985 | EAST BERLIN

In the musty East Berlin velodrome, with stopwatch in hand, the trainer blew the whistle and the East German women’s national cycling team took off. Pedaling their single-gear track bikes, they moved easily, gradually accelerating as they made their way around the 250-meter pinewood track.

Winding their way around the oval in a graceful, measured cadence, they slid seamlessly into a tight paceline, their bikes only inches apart, their thin tires gripping the track’s shiny lacquered finish.

Syncing technique with speed, they postured for position, increasing speed on the straights and banking on the curves. Then, when their trainers shouted for better form and more effort, East Germany’s top-tier cyclists broke out of their tight formation and pushed at full bore.

By the next lap, they were full-on, jostling for control of the track, pushing with everything they had, their tires seemingly defying gravity, clinging to the track’s slippery, steep-sloped walls by centrifugal force. They jetted down the straightaway, passing their trainers in a whoosh, the trainers yelling Weiter! Schneller! (Faster!) and the athletes responded, pouring themselves into every pedal stroke with ferocity.

Pushing, stretching, pedaling as fast as they could go, gunning à bloc as they gapped, dropping back an inch, then surging forward, standing out of the saddle, they forced the pace, trying to control their bikes, finally exploding in one last burst of speed until the trainers clocked it out as the athletes streamed in, one after the other, through the finish.

Just a few miles down the road, believing we had not been followed, our intelligence team dropped off the highway in our olive-drab Ford and made our way into the East German forest on a dirt path that had been carefully chosen to conceal our movement in order to reach our target unobserved. We moved deeper into the silent woods, trying to avoid ruts as we drove carefully along the bumpy path, all the while scanning the wood line for any sign of danger.

Then, just as we began to move into position, a single Soviet soldier, weapon raised, stepped directly into the path of our oncoming car. Other soldiers appeared out of nowhere, immediately taking up positions around the car, cutting off any chance of escape.

With soldiers now blocking the path in front and rear, a Soviet officer made his way to the passenger side of the car, brandishing a pistol as he chambered a round.

The muzzle of his loaded pistol tap-tap-tapped against the glass. He ordered, Atkroy okno. (Roll down the window.)

When there was no response, the muzzle of the gun now fixed against the glass, he snapped, Seychass! (Now!)

PART ONE

Schwaneberg schoolhouse and church

Courtesy of Heimatverein Schwaneberg e.V.

1

THE HANDOVER

END OF WAR

(1945)

A mother’s love knows no bounds.

—Author unknown

Our story started when one war ended and another began.

The day World War II ended, my grandmother, Oma, was one of the first in the village to emerge from the underground cellar and step out into the still and desolate landscape of rural Schwaneberg. At forty years old, her belly swollen with her seventh child, she hoisted open the heavy wooden door and climbed up onto the dry, dusty landing as her children followed, squinting as their eyes met the daylight.

Other village women and children emerged from the cellars of their own homes, wandering about and awakening to what promised to be a new day in Germany. With no able-bodied men around to assist her, Oma directed her children to help her pull up the bedding from down below where they had lived during the last two months of the war, and move it all back upstairs into the living space of the family’s wing of the schoolhouse. There would be no more overhead Allied bombing runs en route to their targets in the nearby industrial city of Magdeburg. Germany had been defeated, Europe had been liberated, and the skies were finally quiet.

It didn’t take long for the village women to meet one another over picket fences to speculate when their husbands and sons would return. They wondered about what lay ahead for Germany and, most important to them, what was in store for their village of some 900 inhabitants.

Oma saw no use in dwelling on worry and set herself instead to getting her house back in order. Though school had been closed for months, she insisted her children return to their studies and get back to their chores, cleaning out the schoolhouse and scrubbing down the desks to prepare for a new school year. With food stocks all but used up and the ground fallow, the once-green potato beds emptied and parched to hard-cracked dirt, she directed the younger children to gather dandelion and nettle greens in the meadows and comb the berry bushes for any remaining fruit while the older children helped her prepare the soil for all the planting they had missed that spring.

When most of the men had still not returned after several weeks, a pall descended on the village. After only a few men came back, Oma began to wonder when, or even if, her husband and son were ever coming home. Opa, my grandfather, a forty-five-year-old schoolteacher and headmaster, and their oldest son, Roland, not even eighteen years old, had been pressed into service in the waning days of the war, when the Third Reich had ordered that every last able-bodied male over the age of fifteen join in the fight to the end for Germany.

As the women waited for their men to return from the front, they became alarmed when stories seeped into the village that, as the Soviets were making their way onto German soil, they were raping and killing German women. Word spread quickly that Stalin openly encouraged rape and pillage as the spoils of war, a reward for Red Army soldiers for their sacrifices and the struggles they had endured against the German army, the Wehrmacht. Refugees passing through Schwaneberg on their way to the West confirmed the reports, recounting their own harrowing stories of savage assaults or telling of others murdered after a rape or when they fought their attackers. One family told a horrific story of their teenage daughter who was raped, then shot dead in broad daylight.

Women throughout Germany now feared for their lives. In Schwaneberg, they hoped that their men would return home in time to protect them should the Soviets enter their village. Oma became especially concerned for her oldest daughter, a pretty, wide-eyed, raven-haired seventeen-year-old—my mother, Hanna.

By spring, American, British, and Soviet units were rolling into cities, towns, and villages throughout Germany to establish command and order. Oma, like most of the women in Schwaneberg, believing Hitler’s denigration that the Russians were a barbaric lot, prayed the Americans or British would take their village. The American commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, some noted, even had a German name, which bolstered their hope that the Americans were more like them than the Russians were.

Then one quiet afternoon in mid-May, their wait came to an end.

Everyone in the house and even the neighbors heard little Kai shriek from the loft upstairs. Her round, pregnant form slowing her, Oma made her way up the staircase of the east wing of the schoolhouse as her other children, Manni, Klemens, Tiele, and Hanna, bound past her. At the top of the landing, she found her little Kai surrounded by his brothers and sisters, pointing out the small oval window to some trucks in the distance. The family perched at the window in silence, anxiously waiting to catch a glimpse of which army was rolling in. The small convoy of three trucks inched closer, then stopped when it reached the edge of the village. Oma watched, her nerves in knots as she braced for a sign. From his window, the mayor unfurled a white sheet. The village mothers jumped to follow his lead, all of them, including Oma, hanging white sheets from their windows.

The trucks approached cautiously and finally came into full view. The children froze and Oma stared in disbelief until the older boys broke the silence with an ecstatic cheer. The first vehicle, marked with a white star, slowly led the convoy as it made its way down Adolph-Hitler-Strasse, and onto the cobblestone square. Down below, the mayor appeared from his house and quickly hobbled onto the street to welcome the Americans. Hanna looked at Oma, who smiled and gave her a nod, the go-ahead to take her siblings out to join the crowd quickly assembling outside.

The Americans stopped their trucks. From atop, they tossed Hershey’s chocolate and gum to the village children, who were quickly disarmed by the soldiers’ cheerful expressions and animated demeanor. As they passed out treats, the soldiers spoke in friendly tones with happy-sounding words that none of the villagers could actually understand. One soldier removed his helmet and hoisted Manni onto his jeep as other little boys looked on with envy. From up in their windows and down on the street, the village mothers watched the scene, waving to one another and raising their hands to the heavens in gratitude.

Over the next few days, nearly everyone became enamored of the American soldiers, their easy, open way, their childlike humor and lighthearted antics. For the first time in many months the women smiled, becoming particularly amused when the soldiers sent their children into fits of giggles when they botched German phrases, saying things like Hello frowline. Itch leeba ditch, or calling everyone Schatzi, an endearment reserved for parents or for those in love.

Over the next weeks, the Americans established calm and control. They clowned around a lot, laughing, taking pictures of themselves with some of the village children, even assembling to get a group photograph in front of the Adolf-Hitler-Strasse sign, which one of them removed afterward to take home as a souvenir.

For the most part, though they endeared themselves to the community, a few vented their anger against the Nazis by taking it out on the villagers, looting and destroying personal property. Oma came home one day to find that the lock on Opa’s desk had been pried open, the contents—a silver letter opener and heirloom box—stolen, and a swastika carved into the seat of his big leather chair. On the seat, like a calling card, lay an American penny. By and large, however, the villagers’ worries began to subside, most of them believing that, under the Americans, their lives would get better.

But their relief did not last long. One day the Americans shocked the villagers with an announcement that they were leaving.

Germany has been divided into two separate areas of administration, said the senior sergeant. The Americans and British would take command of the western part of Germany and the Soviets, the East. Looking over the crowd, he said simply, Schwaneberg will fall under Russian control.

The villagers were stunned. It was as if the bomb they had feared during the war had finally exploded in the village.

There is nothing to fear, the sergeant continued, assuring them. The war is over and the Russians will come not as fighting troops, but as a peaceful occupation force.

The crowd became agitated. Someone muttered about fleeing before the Soviets arrived. Hanna turned to Oma and suggested the family pack up and go, but Oma dismissed the idea. It was not a reasonable plan in the first days after a war for a pregnant woman with so many young children to flee, without food or shelter, without men for protection, facing chaos and uncertainty on the road with thousands of other refugees disappearing to places unknown.

And besides, she said, how awful if Papa and Roland came home to find that we had abandoned them.

Oma’s attention was drawn back to the sergeant, who concluded with one last announcement.

Should anyone have a compelling reason to leave, he said, we are authorized to take a few villagers with us to the West. The women now looked at one another. Some fidgeted, some stepped back, most shook their heads, not willing to consider breaking up their families. They returned to their homes trying to console themselves about what the future might hold under Soviet occupation.

That night marked one of the most difficult decisions Oma would ever have to make. Sometime after midnight, she went into Hanna’s bedroom and quietly sat on the edge of her bed. As she watched her daughter sleep, she studied Hanna’s face and reminisced about her childhood, taking stock of her life, starting with the very night of her birth.

Hanna had come into the world on a bitterly cold, dark winter night in Trabitz, a tiny hamlet on the Saale River. Outside the schoolhouse that night the winds had kicked up enormous snowflakes that had wildly flown about all evening long and never seemed to settle. The rooftops and trees had been covered in a thick white blanket of snow and the rooms inside were ice cold. In the wooden-slatted garret of the one-room schoolhouse, Oma, not much older than her oldest daughter was now, prepared to give birth alone. Opa, a schoolteacher in his mid-twenties, had run off into the night to try to find the doctor. Their firstborn, ten-month-old Roland, slept soundly in a wooden cradle a few feet away. Then, in the stillness of the night, the new baby came into the world, its cries echoing throughout the hollow room. Oma cleaned the baby with her blanket and looked to see that she had given birth to a girl. Holding her newborn against her skin, she calmed the baby, who settled easily into the soft folds of her exhausted body.

As a little girl, Hanna had wanted to grow up quickly. While Roland had blossomed into an ideal child, his precocious little sister had been difficult. Roland was a parent’s dream: obedient, smart, a natural-born leader. Hanna, however, the little curly-haired firecracker with steely blue eyes that constantly scanned the scene for any sign of adventure and mischief, was playful and impish, a rabble-rouser with endless energy who made her own rules, falling in line with her father’s discipline only when it suited her.

By the time Hanna was four, Opa wondered why, unlike other children, she could not manage to sit still. Too young for school, Oma would hand her a hoe and set her to help in the garden. When Hanna grew bored with that, Oma put her in charge of feeding the rabbits grass and hay, which often ended with Hanna purposely failing to properly close the gates, then gleefully chasing the rabbits until they were caught and accounted for. In an effort to calm her restless spirit, Oma taught Hanna to knit but she quickly lost interest in that as well and asked Opa to teach her to read. At five years old she could read the newspaper. Opa occasionally brought her along to his Saturday-night card games at the pub and made her read words aloud like Nationalsozialistische Bewegung (national socialist movement) and Demokratisierung (democratization), enjoying it when his friends laughed in disbelief. Wanting badly to go to school, every day she sat outside Opa’s classroom window crying, then wailing until Opa emerged from the schoolhouse and chased her away, ordering her to go home. At home she would cry some more but was always back the next morning outside the window to repeat the scene. At her wits’ end, Oma pleaded with Opa to take Hanna into the classroom and let her sit in the back. Unable to see her father from the back row, where she sat with the oldest and tallest children in the one-room schoolhouse, she remained quiet as a little mouse, stealing glances at her older, endlessly fascinating neighbors. After that, Oma bought her a slate board and tied a sponge and a drying cloth to the hole in the wooden frame and Hanna happily carried the board with her wherever she went, practicing letters and writing words whenever she saw them.

Roland, age three, piloting, with Hanna, age two, in 1929

Courtesy of the Willner family

(Clockwise from upper left:) Klemens; Hanna, age ten; Tiele; Manni, in 1937

Courtesy

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