Book Review:

Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall by Nina Willner (Author)

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.

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.

Canadian Prairie Girls Hitching Days

This was my account of when, Marion and Jacqui, my friends and I hitched hiked into West Berlin in 1960. We got a ride with a couple of fellows driving a truck load of news-print paper into West Berlin.

Going through the East Germany we waited in line for hours at the check points. We had to buy a visa permit and had our passports checked several times. As we drove through East Germany we noticed the lack of repairs to homes and roads. Villages along the Autobahn looked just as they must have looked when the war ended. It all seemed very dreary. We passed Magdeburg the biggest and only petroleum producing area in East Germany. All along the Autobahn there were Red Police watching from watch towers.

Going through West Berlin there were American, French and British check-points. West Berlin had beautiful newly built tall apartments, very modern churches , shopping areas with thousands of electric lights and neon signs.

From West Berlin it was easy to travel into East Berlin without being hampered by red tape. We took the underground to 'Stadmitte', which was East Berlin's “city centre'. When we climbed the stairs to the street we were surprised to find only blackened bombed ruins over-grown with grass and weeds and not a person was in sight.

Marion's aunt who lived in Souffeld, East Germany, had a few days visit permit to came to West Berlin to see us.