Systems as a whole in the context of social and economic circumstances. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Well do that right now. Hi, everyone, i think were ready to get started. Welcome to politics pros. My name is emily, im a manager here at the bookstore. Before we get to the good stuff, so can you silent the cell phones and be in this moment together and be present. That would be wonderful. Because we are i am inning with booktv, if you have questions after the talk, if you use the microphone right here. Only way to capture sound for the audience not present with us today. Dont raise your hand. Definitely to to the mic. It helps a lot. If youre not familiar of us we do author events a year. If you enjoy this event, check a out the Events Calendar at information desk. See what events are coming up. We have events through december 8th. Thank you very much. Im excited to welcome nina wilner to politics prose today. She has worked in russia and eastern europe, promoting human rights and childrens causes for the u. S. Government, nonprofit organizations and variety of organizations. In forty autumns through other history. She tell as story of three generations of indomitable women and tell as picture of totalitarian regime. They write its a powerful addition to the genre. Economist east germany over four decades and how reforms affected individual lives. Please welcome me well join e in welcoming nina wilner. [applause] thank you, emily. Thank you, politics prose, thanks for joining me today. What is essentially my book launch. I appreciate all of you taking the time out to cant hear back here. E. Is this on . Is the mic on . [inaudible] okay. I can speak up. Does that work . Okay. There we go. I think thats it. So, again thank you all for being here today. To share this day which marks a culmination of quite a journey for me. Before i get started, i would just like to mention a few people with us today. Lt. General tom griffin who, among other postings in his remarkable career, with commander of berlin in the 1980s, when i was posted to berlin. Friends, colleagues who are here today. Dr. Hope harrison, who is one of the leading scholars on east germany and the cold war and im honored that she agreed to be the historian for my project. My family, including my mother, who my mother hannah, who at the age of 20 escaped from east germany and ran to freedom, eventually coming to america. And without her courage i of course would not be here tellina you this story today. So, 40 autumns what is the book about . What happened to my family during the cold war, my mothers escape from communist easts germany, to the family she left behind, large family, mother, father, eight siblings essentially trapped into a prison country. My going into east germany as am Young AmericanIntelligence Officer and leading operations on soviet territory in east berlin. The story is set in the Bigger Picture, Bigger Picture of the framework cold war story. Epic clash of soviet americann struggle in the space race and Nuclear Arms Race and conflicts that raged around the world at times. Tensions boarded on the brink of nuclear war. Within that story is, my family, forcibly separated for 40 years, never knowing if they would ever see each other again. So, id like to start off with a little bit of background and put us on the map. I dont actually have a mape today but there are maps in the book. So at the end of world war ii, 1945, soviets, western allies, canadians, brits, french have defeated the nazis and making their way throughout germany tog liberate the country. The americans are first to arrive in a tiny village where my mother hannah, a teenager at the time, her parents, and her siblings live. The americans stay for a short while but then explain to the villagers that the country has been divided. The west, the west will be administered by the western allies, the east by the soviets. The american sergeant tells thet villagers falls in the east. Rg the americans explain they can take one or two villagers withhe them in the west but no one in the village wants to break up their families. Oma, my grandmother hearing stories that the soviets are raping german women as they make their way through the country, forces her oldest daughter, my mother, hannah, 17 years old to leave with the americans who are headed westward. Several miles down the road hannah catapults herself over side of the truck and goes running back home to her family. The next day the soviets arrive. So germany is essentially divided into two halves. The western allies take control of what becomes west germany. The soviets occupy the eastern half of the country that becomes east germany. Deep inside of east germany, 110 miles inside of east germany is berlin, which just like germany itself divided into two halves. West berlin run by the western allies, east berlin bit soviets. West berlin is tiny island of democracy and freedom completely encircledded by communist territory. Ly the east become as police state based on communist authoritarianism. One Party Communist dictatorship based on the modeled on the soviet union and ministry for state security known as theorshb stasi, secret police, is modeled on the soviet kgb, basically forces the population into submission through fear and intimidation. On the other side, the west is administered by the nato allies and is based on democracy and freedom. As the Marshall Plan begins to develop the west the soviets strip the east. Gi everything from Railroad Tracks to Farm Machinery to toilets, even doorknobs. Entire cities and towns are gutted. Whole factories are dismantled to be reassembled in the soviet union. Food is to be turned into and divided equally among the people is either slow to happen or doesnt happen at all. The communist authoritiesis confiscate private land, private property, and soviets and communist germans impose rules which essentially amount to conform or youre an enemy of the state. Words against the regime are enough to have anyone intear interrogated or imprisoned. My mother as village . Swhaneneburg, they occupy the village soviet army comes asas friends and brothers to help build a new germany. But they follow that all food to be relinquished to the soviet command immediately. Anyone found hoarding food for himself or his family will be shot. Anyone who attack as soviet soldier will be shot and so on so an intense Propaganda Campaign ensues and more laws are instituted. Communist regime takes over society, outlawing religion, media and all forms of information. Even trying to broadcast or jam broadcast signals coming from the west. I would like to share a little vignette from the book that illustrates the kind of things happening at this time in east germany. So at this point my mother, my mother lived for a short time in the border town, which is a border town with west germany. So east and west with her grand thats father. Because it was a border town the authorities often afraid it would be easy, quick access for people to make a break. So in sabenow, the authorities kept a close eye on young people. Were curfews were enforced, started before sunrise and well before dawn. Punishment of those having knowledge of an escape and failed to report it. Words against the regime were enough to have person escorted to the seven yesterday headquarters. Mft sovie a converted stable where they were interrogated and hauled to prison. Took some longer than others to get the message. During a day at school they were milling about in hahn gnaws classroom, this boy dieter had tendency to talk too much went too far. How can they teach us this slop, dieter scoffed. Teaching us stalin the great leader. Two years ago the teacher was teaching stalin was great demond with his tongue out. As he other boys guffawed and he approached the boys by the scruff and hauled out of class. Dieter was not seen again. And so tens of thousands of people like dieter were sent to jail and hundreds would be executed. While many were able to flee east germany, in the first years, first five years it becomes harder as east germany fortifies its border with the west and Border Guards are given orders to shoot to kill. So while food is many coulding into west germany, in the east people go hungry. My mother hannah tells a story of being sent to work in the fields pulling carrots and being so hungry but she doesnt evenen eat a single carrot for fear someone will see her eating unauthorized food and she will be shot. In the village two girls set out cardboard sign, saying dear communist party, please give fused. Not the image that soviets want to portray. They haul the girls off to prison. I know this story having interviewed one of the girls who served yearandahalf in jail for that offense. In swan menburg, opa, my grandfather is a village teacher who is required to teach soviet doctrine, marxist theory and even russian language which he learns the night before teaching it the next day. Oma, my grandmother tries to cope, urging her children to lay low, follow the rules and not attract undue at attention. The children join young pioneers. Hannahs closest sibling, her older brother signs up to be a a tiefer in the communist system. Hannah see what is is going on all around her and has no intention of conforming. Almost all connections between east and west are severed. There is Currency Division between east and west. Inside of east germany that sees things getting more dire. Raises her concerns to her grandfather. He takes her out where the rail lines going toward the west have been pulled up. And are gone. And he tells her if you want ton get out, if you want to get out, do it soon. In less than a year this place will be one big prison. So she makes several attempts at escape. Once with her grandfathers help. Once she is shot at by soviet soldier. Twice she is dragged back into the east and third time she makes it. And its this escape that sets into motion the story. A journey which launches our family through the next 40 years, through the cold war. Is p so over the next 40 years we learn very little about theold a family in the east. Were able to exchange a few letters but learn very little what was happening in their lives. Wh the most we in the west actually knew at all was east germany was a bleak, reclusive police state that had an appalling human rights record and imprisoned its citizens. In shwanberg, my opa, principled man with a short fuse, cant help but speak up when he sees injustices all around him. Even writes a letter to the east german leader speaking on behalf of the farmers suggesting a compromise between the new laws of collectivization and what the farmers want which is to keep some of their land. Well that didnt go over too well. So, now besides being father of a criminal, because he, he is associated with, because his daughter has escaped, he is on the authorities watch list as being a troublemaker and branded politically unreliable. So when ordered to keep his place in society i works hard to prove himself to the authorities. And he joins the communist party. F and one year after hannah has fled to the west, another child, little heidi, the ninth and last child, in the family is born. Oma pleads with the authorities to be able to go see her daughter hannah in the west, and after many rejections the authorities finally agree to it but under the conditions that oma will spy on hannah, who is now working for the americans at the u. S. Army military headquarters in heidelberg, west germany. Oma is allowed to takeny fiveyearold heidi who will meet hannah for the first time. This as it turns out will be the only time the two will ever meet in those 40 years. Its a brief but powerful meeting and heidi grows up idolizing her sister who escaped. So much so as an adult, she never joins the communist partyu in the book i describe how heidi managed with the results of that decision. So, in the ice the secret police intensify their control and manipulation of the population of east germanys 18 million citizens, perfecting methods of penetrating every aspect of a persons life, reading their mail, listening in on conversations, tracking movements, gathering compromising details in the attempt to learn peoples weaknesses so that can be exploited. In the book i talk about how the stasi tries to get the family to inform on each other and sends my grandparents to the west on a second spy mission to find out about hannahs work and her new husband, my father, eddie, who is the u. S. Army Intelligence Officer stationed at the heidelberg headquarters. And this is, by the way my last time my mother will see her parents. In the east the stasi ramps up the use of informants, using its own citizens to work as spies e who report on share neighbors, classmates, colleagues, teachers, even their own family thmbers. S. The program is a success because no one can be trusted and no one knows who the informants are. It could be your friend, the person you share an office with, a teammate on the sports team, the janitor in your apartment complex. The program of using informants would have eventually have one in six east germans informing on their fellow citizens. One interesting story, from a man who is former east german and today a historian, wellknown historian in germany tells the story of after the wall fell in the early 1990s, he was having a conversation with a former stasi agent and he said, i think i would have known if you had sent someone to spy on me. The stasi man answered, we didnt need to send anyone. These were people who surrounded you. And in fact when he got his stasi file, two of his best friends had reported on him. So all this is to say that this became a way of life. And this is how life normalized for the people of east germany. People learn to adapt, selfsensor their thoughts, and this just become as way of survival. As my aunt told me, we survived by following rules, staying below the stasi radar and not could not fronting the system. So in 1953 there is an up rising in east germany. Workers protest living and working conditions and demonstrate for basic humaner rights and for reform and for freedom. But the red army moves in with tanks and crushes the rebellion. Hundreds are killed. 10 of thousands are arrested for their role in participating. Some 100 organizers are executed. And along with around 20 soviet soldiers who are executed for refusing to shoot demonstratorso and now the secret police tells the leadership, tells the secret police to do whatever is necessary to make sure an uprising never happens again. By the 1960s, some 3 million, around 1 6 of the population has fled and the regime decides that the time has come to do something to stop the hemorrhaging of its labor force. If they dont want to see their country collapse all together. The border between east and west germany is secured, in berlin, due to interconnected nate tush of the city people are able to s escape into west berlin. By now there are rumors that regime plans some day build a structure, a wall, to permanently separate west berlin from the east, thus cutting off the last hope of escape. By the early 1960s, 2000 east germans a day are fleeing into west berlin. The east german leader tries to quell the surge of escapes going on the airwaves saying, this is a quote, no one has inintension of building a wall intention building a wall. But one month later that is exactly what he does. What starts as barbedwire and brick wall becomes 12foot high, three feet thick, rounded wall top to prevent grasping, wire america, elect call fencing is installed, tripwires, searchlights and a death strip, 100yard wide gauntlet of carefully raked sand which makes it easy to spot the foot prints of escapees. The wall stretches over 100 miles, completely encircling berlin and seals the country. One year later in 1962, to my grandparents, especially my opas great disappointment, his youngest son, my uncle kai, isrded to be a border guard to serve at berlin wall. Between the building of the wall in 1961 and the fall of the wall in 1989, almost 10050 people would be shot trying 150 people are shot trying to escape. 1,000 others are killed trying to cross the border elsewhere or drowning in the baltic sea or the berlin river. The berlin wall is built to keep the people in but the east german leadership tells its people the wall is built to keep subversives out, subversives from the west out but the family in the east knows it. Although some east germans might be fooled, millions of others know exactly why the wall was built. Milli so by now oma, my grandmother has built a wall of her own. Even gives it a name, the family wall. So i just like to read another excerpt from the book. Th the safe haven that she had begun to create the day theavene soviets stepped foot ino sheltee shwanberg to shelter from the suffocation of the regime now had a name. She declared the family wall a sanctuary. They would preserve their souls by keeping the good in and the bad out. By the children followed omas lead and the concept took hold. Inside the family wall the children let down their guard. As the fabric of east German Society began to fray under the yoke of an orwellian climate ofb oppression, families wondered whether or not they could trust their spouses parents or o siblings, oma demanded family trust and loyalty. Behind closed doors to opa, oma insisted that they foster the idea of the family wall if they were to have any chance against a regime out to crush the spirit of its people. So the cold war rages on. The space race takes off. The Nuclear Arms Race continues, with both the soviet union and u. S. Building their nuclear arsenals. Major world tensions pit communism and democracy against one another. President kennedy and soviet leader crew chef go headtohead in various conflicts. Khrushchev eventually says to the west, we wilbury you. After the wall is built, east germany ace reputation, already at a low, plummets. In an effort to upgrade its image the regime launch as Sports Program likes of which never seen in history at all. Suddenly the tiny country of east germany is producing extraordinary athletes. The countrys reputation goes up for a while, the world stopping to watch every time an eastio german shatters a record at world competitions and at the olympics. But then it is discovered that east germany is doping its top athletes. Back in shwaneberg, opa speaks up against the regime, chalks up more black marks and pays the price for his belligerence. He is denounced, marginalized from society, kicked out of the communist party and banished to a remote area in east germany. Even sent for a time to an insane asylum where he has to undergo reeducation training. The family makes its way in the system. Most of the children grow up to become teachers. They lived their lives by following the rules, following