Search For Relatives
The Communist Regime and the Iron Curtain lasted from 1945-1991. Once the Iron Curtain fell, people could once again travel to research or reclaim their identities as Germans.
The German Red Cross helps to identify and locate family members who lost contact with one another, such as the Wolf children, during the turmoil in East Prussia. “It was only the politics of Gorbatschow which allowed the opening of the Russian archives. Since the 1990s, the fates of about 200,000 additional missing persons have been clarified. More information about the fates of Germans who were taken prisoners and died still remain in unopened archives in Eastern and South-eastern Europe.
Read more about this topic: Wolf Children
Famous quotes containing the words search for, search and/or relatives:
“The danger lies in forgetting what we had. The flow between generations becomes a trickle, grandchildren tape-recording grandparents’ memories on special occasions perhaps—no casual storytelling jogged by daily life, there being no shared daily life what with migrations, exiles, diasporas, rendings, the search for work. Or there is a shared daily life riddled with holes of silence.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“why
Do our black faces search the empty sky?
Is there something we have forgotten? some precious thing
We have lost, wandering in strange lands?”
—Arna Bontemps (1902–1973)
“The poor in bustling towns aren’t called upon, but the rich deep in the mountains have relatives visiting them from afar.”
—Chinese proverb.