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These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 2 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 3 00:03:17,360 --> 00:03:20,440 Nobody likes to leave their own homeland... 4 00:03:22,520 --> 00:03:25,520 ... the place where they opened their eyes upon this world. 5 00:03:25,680 --> 00:03:30,760 Homeland also includes the circle you move in, the people there. 6 00:03:31,240 --> 00:03:34,720 Homeland is not only a geographic space. 7 00:03:35,480 --> 00:03:37,760 Homeland... very difficult to define. 8 00:03:38,040 --> 00:03:42,360 Something that touches your heart, that comes from your soul 9 00:03:42,680 --> 00:03:47,520 but if you must put it into words: point 1, point 2, point 3... 10 00:03:47,720 --> 00:03:49,480 It doesn't work! 11 00:03:50,480 --> 00:03:57,120 Things that have to do with a sense of security within our immediate family ! 12 00:03:57,440 --> 00:03:59,200 that is homeland for me. 13 00:03:59,400 --> 00:04:03,000 It is a safe childhood. It's love! 14 00:04:03,480 --> 00:04:08,480 Freedom is to be able to decide where you can settle down 15 00:04:08,720 --> 00:04:11,400 and where you want to try your luck. 16 00:04:11,720 --> 00:04:14,320 In Romania they told you: this is happiness. 17 00:04:15,160 --> 00:04:17,400 The definition of homeland? 18 00:04:17,600 --> 00:04:19,760 Well, I think the definition of homeland 19 00:04:19,960 --> 00:04:26,160 is where you spent your youth, where you grew up, where you 20 00:04:33,400 --> 00:04:35,320 This strikes a chord! 21 00:04:36,960 --> 00:04:42,080 I have often thought of my father, who died back there in 1978, 22 00:04:42,320 --> 00:04:47,160 and who always said We can't just leave everything! 23 00:04:47,760 --> 00:04:53,080 This is what our ancestors have built over centuries, we can't get up and leave! 24 00:04:53,400 --> 00:04:59,600 But that was the course of history and no one could avoid it! 25 00:05:11,160 --> 00:05:13,040 ... Germans from Romania... 26 00:05:16,280 --> 00:05:17,960 ... panic ensued... 27 00:05:18,760 --> 00:05:21,520 No one wanted to be left behind... 28 00:05:21,960 --> 00:05:24,880 like an epidemic of plague befalling the Germans... 29 00:05:27,800 --> 00:05:30,480 It was a huge humanitarian action, 30 00:05:30,720 --> 00:05:35,440 it was the liberation of ethnic Germans from Romania, 31 00:05:36,080 --> 00:05:40,120 who wanted to leave Romania of their own free will 32 00:05:40,680 --> 00:05:44,400 but weren't allowed to because of the political conditions. 33 00:05:44,680 --> 00:05:47,040 It was the purchase of freedom! 34 00:06:23,880 --> 00:06:26,240 I don't know of any precedent, 35 00:06:26,400 --> 00:06:29,160 of any other such case in history. 36 00:06:29,720 --> 00:06:32,400 I think the nature and dimension 37 00:06:32,560 --> 00:06:35,000 of this operation were unique. 38 00:06:44,960 --> 00:06:48,160 It began rather like an adventure, 39 00:06:49,640 --> 00:06:54,560 which required quite a bit of courage and perseverance. 40 00:06:56,520 --> 00:07:00,160 All sorts of things could have happened to me. 41 00:07:00,760 --> 00:07:04,680 One had an idea of how the Eastern Bloc secret services worked. 42 00:07:04,920 --> 00:07:06,680 It was risky! 43 00:07:06,960 --> 00:07:11,000 Of course I took the risk, because I too believed in the cause. 44 00:07:13,120 --> 00:07:16,800 I travelled as a lawyer ! as a tourist, practically ! 45 00:07:16,960 --> 00:07:20,400 without any diplomatic (or any other kind) of protection, 46 00:07:20,680 --> 00:07:24,680 and one never knew who was on the other side. 47 00:07:26,600 --> 00:07:32,080 The presumed partner was the Securitate, the Romanian secret police... 48 00:07:36,440 --> 00:07:40,680 It had an extremely bad reputation in Europe. 49 00:07:42,840 --> 00:07:47,160 As the Stasi ! the East German secret police ! used to do 50 00:07:47,800 --> 00:07:55,600 the Securitate created a file on me File no. 3673, codename EDUARD. 51 00:07:58,160 --> 00:08:00,440 Eduard, that was me! 52 00:08:07,240 --> 00:08:10,800 Hüsch was a highly dependable, secretive man, 53 00:08:11,040 --> 00:08:14,400 highly regarded by his own party. 54 00:08:14,560 --> 00:08:17,160 He was the man to trust! And we did. 55 00:08:17,360 --> 00:08:20,160 I mean, he did all that under four federal chancellors! 56 00:08:20,400 --> 00:08:23,520 And this had to be approved again each time. 57 00:08:23,720 --> 00:08:27,240 Back then it was a secret, and it has remained one, if I may say so, 58 00:08:27,480 --> 00:08:30,960 to this day ! unknown to the general public. 59 00:08:31,160 --> 00:08:33,520 Key politicians were aware of 60 00:08:33,720 --> 00:08:36,840 the issue of this ransom, of course. They played dumb. 61 00:08:37,040 --> 00:08:39,480 It didn't play any role in domestic policy. 62 00:08:39,880 --> 00:08:44,480 We were interested in helping the people. This was our governing rule. 63 00:08:44,920 --> 00:08:48,920 And if it was only possible through secret negotiations, 64 00:08:49,880 --> 00:08:54,120 then these negotiations had to be carried out confidentially. 65 00:09:02,320 --> 00:09:06,680 The governments washed their hands of this matter and passed it on to us. 66 00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:08,880 They said: "Talk to them!" 67 00:09:09,280 --> 00:09:11,440 "Don't ask us. They are the ones in charge." 68 00:09:11,640 --> 00:09:15,640 But it was not true. Because behind us stood the government. 69 00:09:16,240 --> 00:09:19,600 That is, both the German and the Romanian governments. 70 00:09:21,400 --> 00:09:24,480 As far as authority and responsibility went, 71 00:09:24,680 --> 00:09:27,120 we were not allowed to do what we did. 72 00:09:27,360 --> 00:09:31,360 So from the point of view of law in Germany and Romania alike, 73 00:09:31,560 --> 00:09:34,160 what we did was illegal. 74 00:09:42,560 --> 00:09:47,680 The negotiations took place in a back room of the Hotel Ambasador, 75 00:09:47,960 --> 00:09:51,960 which was not especially inviting ! I called it a sleazy dump once. 76 00:09:53,120 --> 00:09:57,120 The first condition was: absolute confidentiality. 77 00:09:57,360 --> 00:10:00,920 In case of breach of confidentiality, we would abort the mission. 78 00:10:01,200 --> 00:10:04,280 Second: there would be no German lists [of names], 79 00:10:04,520 --> 00:10:11,000 only confirmations for the number of approved emigrations. 80 00:10:12,440 --> 00:10:17,160 The Romanian side expected some sort of financial compensation in return 81 00:10:17,760 --> 00:10:23,560 through a method of payment that remained to be developed in detail. 82 00:10:24,440 --> 00:10:28,200 In cash, in Deutschmarks... 83 00:10:28,400 --> 00:10:30,920 with no receipts. 84 00:10:32,000 --> 00:10:35,920 Romania's relations with Germany were, however, 85 00:10:36,200 --> 00:10:40,600 better than its relations with any of the other Western countries. 86 00:10:41,800 --> 00:10:46,320 This was justified, of course, because Germany was interested 87 00:10:46,480 --> 00:10:50,640 in retrieving a number of ethnic Germans from Romania. 88 00:11:01,040 --> 00:11:04,360 For the first time, the Federal Republic has welcomed a communist head of state, 89 00:11:04,520 --> 00:11:06,840 the Romanian president Ceaușescu. 90 00:11:19,800 --> 00:11:24,320 Thank you for offering us 91 00:11:24,480 --> 00:11:28,800 these wonderful works by Beethoven. 92 00:11:41,880 --> 00:11:45,880 Of course, on the Romanian side, there were no humanitarian considerations. 93 00:11:46,920 --> 00:11:50,920 There were only strong economic interests behind it all. 94 00:11:58,880 --> 00:12:02,080 The issue was quite unique 95 00:12:02,240 --> 00:12:04,720 because there had been no expulsions 96 00:12:04,880 --> 00:12:09,480 from Romania after WWII. 97 00:12:10,160 --> 00:12:14,160 While Germans had to leave their homeland 98 00:12:14,320 --> 00:12:16,520 in other European countries, 99 00:12:16,680 --> 00:12:20,000 in Romania they were allowed to stay. 100 00:12:22,840 --> 00:12:25,240 Romania had a different attitude 101 00:12:25,400 --> 00:12:28,240 because it had acknowledged 102 00:12:28,400 --> 00:12:33,120 how important the German minority was 103 00:12:33,280 --> 00:12:37,320 to the economic development of the country. 104 00:12:37,720 --> 00:12:42,440 That is why this problem reached such magnitude only in Romania. 105 00:14:21,160 --> 00:14:26,240 The government has a responsibility towards people with German background. 106 00:14:26,720 --> 00:14:30,200 According to our constitution, they are Germans. 107 00:14:30,720 --> 00:14:34,360 So if they are in need, you are bound to help. 108 00:14:35,160 --> 00:14:38,600 With Romania, it was emigration or nothing. 109 00:14:38,840 --> 00:14:43,360 We could not help on-site. So only the alternative remained. 110 00:14:43,720 --> 00:14:47,440 The deal was: if you pay, you can have them all. 111 00:14:47,680 --> 00:14:50,320 All right, so we paid! 112 00:14:50,600 --> 00:14:54,040 This is the suitcase in which the money was carried. 113 00:14:54,560 --> 00:15:00,600 This briefcase that I used could fit about 6 to 6.5 million DM. 114 00:15:01,680 --> 00:15:04,680 You had to press the notes a bit, if they were new. 115 00:15:04,920 --> 00:15:07,720 That way more would go in. 116 00:15:07,960 --> 00:15:11,160 If there were used notes, which are known to be rather dirty, 117 00:15:11,400 --> 00:15:14,600 then you could not fit that many in. 118 00:15:14,880 --> 00:15:16,800 But you still had to press them down a bit! 119 00:15:23,600 --> 00:15:28,080 All right, imagine you had to carry 20 million. 120 00:15:28,520 --> 00:15:30,960 I don't know how you set about doing that 121 00:15:31,240 --> 00:15:34,600 You must do it while keeping absolute secrecy on the topic, 122 00:15:34,840 --> 00:15:38,840 on the time, on the operations. 123 00:15:39,480 --> 00:15:43,120 On one occasion I was even accompanied by a police escort. 124 00:15:43,400 --> 00:15:48,040 I had to transport 20!24 million DM, to be precise. 125 00:15:48,560 --> 00:15:52,400 There were amounts in the millions sometimes. 126 00:15:52,840 --> 00:15:57,120 I had a gun, which I carried with me. 127 00:15:58,120 --> 00:16:00,400 Of course, not in the Romanian Embassy. 128 00:16:00,680 --> 00:16:04,400 Then I would leave it in the car. 129 00:16:08,160 --> 00:16:10,720 But I carried it in the street, 130 00:16:10,960 --> 00:16:13,400 or here, in my office. 131 00:16:23,760 --> 00:16:27,360 This is the table where many negotiations took place: 132 00:16:27,720 --> 00:16:32,480 calculations and the preparation of new contracts. 133 00:16:32,920 --> 00:16:36,200 They were usually signed in Bucharest. 134 00:16:36,680 --> 00:16:40,240 Well, there they had microphones, here we did not! 135 00:16:41,880 --> 00:16:43,200 Top Secret 136 00:16:45,200 --> 00:16:46,960 Confidential Agreement 137 00:16:50,280 --> 00:16:52,440 Special Agreement 138 00:16:54,920 --> 00:16:57,560 Bucharest - Nürnberg train ticket: 216, - DM 139 00:17:04,040 --> 00:17:07,240 monthly emigration permits 140 00:17:17,320 --> 00:17:20,400 11,000 persons per year 141 00:17:27,520 --> 00:17:31,160 With Dr. Hüsch we did nothing other than settlements. 142 00:17:31,720 --> 00:17:34,000 He would ask me for the lists. 143 00:17:34,280 --> 00:17:37,320 I would present the list of those who had left, 144 00:17:37,480 --> 00:17:39,760 not who had been approved. 145 00:17:40,120 --> 00:17:42,760 The approvals were more numerous than the people who left, 146 00:17:42,880 --> 00:17:45,360 as they could not all leave at once. 147 00:17:45,520 --> 00:17:48,120 Based on that list, Dr. Hüsch would say 148 00:17:48,520 --> 00:17:50,320 ...they must enter Germany! 149 00:17:50,480 --> 00:17:52,960 Some did not set foot in the Federal Republic at all, 150 00:17:53,200 --> 00:17:55,600 but went directly to America or Austria. 151 00:17:55,800 --> 00:17:57,960 So we said We are not paying for those! 152 00:17:58,200 --> 00:18:00,520 Only for those who actually enter Germany. 153 00:18:01,200 --> 00:18:03,320 And then we would calculate and Dr. Hüsch 154 00:18:03,520 --> 00:18:06,080 would either provide a cheque or make a direct transfer. 155 00:18:06,280 --> 00:18:09,160 I preferred direct transfers, which kept things simple. 156 00:18:09,280 --> 00:18:10,760 Anyway, not cash. 157 00:18:11,440 --> 00:18:14,760 This was the beginning of the list business, so to speak. 158 00:18:15,160 --> 00:18:18,920 The accounting meetings took place every two or three months. 159 00:18:20,600 --> 00:18:29,000 And that meant 2000 names or 1000, depending on the flow of departures. 160 00:18:30,040 --> 00:18:33,280 In any case, they had to be ethnic Germans. 161 00:18:33,680 --> 00:18:37,680 The only problem was what we should do with the ethnic Germans 162 00:18:38,040 --> 00:18:41,680 who had Romanian spouses 163 00:18:42,160 --> 00:18:45,600 We handled those cases rather generously. 164 00:18:46,680 --> 00:18:49,520 Let me give you an example: in August 1983 165 00:18:49,920 --> 00:18:54,720 we settled for February, March, April, May and June 1983. 166 00:18:55,920 --> 00:19:00,840 According to our calculations, the Romanian side had to receive 167 00:19:02,200 --> 00:19:10,360 11,534,636.90 DM. 168 00:19:10,680 --> 00:19:14,680 After the amounts were calculated, they were recorded in a document, 169 00:19:14,960 --> 00:19:19,800 per each month, where you had, for instance: 170 00:19:21,160 --> 00:19:26,480 claims from Romania for March '83: 936 people. 171 00:19:27,880 --> 00:19:31,240 Not identified: 42 people; 172 00:19:31,880 --> 00:19:34,960 listed twice: 6 people; 173 00:19:35,960 --> 00:19:39,960 not taken into consideration because of the second entry, 174 00:19:40,400 --> 00:19:42,560 since we are not paying twice: one person. 175 00:19:43,120 --> 00:19:45,280 And foreign ethnicity ! 176 00:19:45,960 --> 00:19:49,760 it should actually have been not of German ethnicity: 2 people. 177 00:19:50,800 --> 00:19:53,640 "The approvals were more numerous than the people who left, 178 00:19:53,800 --> 00:19:56,360 as they could not all leave at once." 179 00:19:56,600 --> 00:20:04,960 So the result was 885 people, not 936, and we agreed to pay for these people. 180 00:20:05,320 --> 00:20:07,120 ... the calculation of the overall sum... 181 00:20:13,760 --> 00:20:17,480 I do believe that Germany was well aware of the fact 182 00:20:17,920 --> 00:20:20,560 that the emigration of the Germans from Romania, 183 00:20:20,880 --> 00:20:23,480 the Transylvanian Saxons and the Banat Swabians, 184 00:20:23,800 --> 00:20:29,160 meant the extinction of a centuries-old cultural tradition. 185 00:20:29,840 --> 00:20:33,560 It was clear to me that Germany would pay for me as well. 186 00:20:33,840 --> 00:20:39,880 It was a business transaction, you were handled by bookkeeping. 187 00:20:42,040 --> 00:20:46,880 Needless to say, I didn't have a good feeling about it. 188 00:20:47,160 --> 00:20:49,200 No question about that... 189 00:21:00,640 --> 00:21:05,200 This is where I live now, in Sandhausen, Heckengarten. 190 00:21:08,120 --> 00:21:11,800 Behind and around this area ! the burden: streets bearing the names 191 00:21:12,080 --> 00:21:17,960 of Mörike, Hauptmann, Lessing, Brecht, Hölderlin, Kant and Hegel. 192 00:21:19,360 --> 00:21:22,680 But if you look closely, though, they are only alleys. 193 00:21:22,840 --> 00:21:24,000 Will everything be fine? 194 00:21:24,880 --> 00:21:27,040 The view is straight over Odenwald. 195 00:21:27,440 --> 00:21:31,640 And no sooner had I learned to write again that I now have to learn anew. 196 00:21:31,800 --> 00:21:34,800 The new orthography requires it. 197 00:21:35,040 --> 00:21:37,920 But this I can avoid. 198 00:21:43,040 --> 00:21:46,640 The issue of family reunification originated in the 1943 treaty 199 00:21:47,040 --> 00:21:50,440 between Hitler and Antonescu, 200 00:21:51,200 --> 00:21:56,720 as Germans from Romania were allowed ! as it were ! 201 00:21:57,400 --> 00:21:59,560 to enlist of their own free will ! 202 00:21:59,720 --> 00:22:03,160 that is, as people said, of their own "compulsory free will", 203 00:22:03,640 --> 00:22:06,400 in German military units. 204 00:22:42,360 --> 00:22:46,360 The worst thing about coming to terms with the past, 205 00:22:46,680 --> 00:22:49,320 regarding Nazism in Transylvania, 206 00:22:49,640 --> 00:22:53,160 is that it caused ambivalence in the family, 207 00:22:53,440 --> 00:22:57,080 because people could have two ideas in their own family. 208 00:22:57,320 --> 00:23:00,040 Not all Saxons were that interested 209 00:23:00,280 --> 00:23:06,000 in considering that being German was to be of the highest value. 210 00:23:06,560 --> 00:23:09,920 There were Saxons who wanted to live with the Romanians. 211 00:23:10,120 --> 00:23:13,600 Yes, you speak German, yes, you have your German schools, 212 00:23:13,800 --> 00:23:19,080 but you do not feel you are part of this Aryan people! 213 00:23:19,440 --> 00:23:21,760 So those people did not think in such terms. 214 00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:26,000 And then there were others who swallowed this idea. 215 00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:29,320 We were in a special situation, 216 00:23:29,560 --> 00:23:34,920 as my father's uncle, Anton-Peter, was the Gauleiter of Banat 217 00:23:35,400 --> 00:23:40,720 and his role was to spread propaganda so that the Swabians in Banat 218 00:23:41,040 --> 00:23:45,280 should voluntarily allow themselves to be drafted into the German army, 219 00:23:45,600 --> 00:23:49,640 and his own nephew, that is, my father, could not stomach this idea. 220 00:23:50,520 --> 00:23:54,600 This led to huge tension. 221 00:24:21,360 --> 00:24:24,840 Young men who had been soldiers 222 00:24:25,040 --> 00:24:28,240 and had not served in the Romanian army, 223 00:24:28,440 --> 00:24:31,560 but in the German Wehrmacht, 224 00:24:31,960 --> 00:24:35,400 were discharged directly in the Federal Republic of Germany. 225 00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:41,760 That meant that a son or a brother from the family was already in West Germany 226 00:24:42,360 --> 00:24:46,760 and that's why they could talk of family reunification. 227 00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:52,720 The parents wanted to be with their son, the brother with his brother, 228 00:24:52,960 --> 00:24:56,960 the sister with her brother or the wife with her husband. 229 00:24:57,400 --> 00:25:01,200 So there were always humanitarian points of view at play. 230 00:25:05,760 --> 00:25:10,800 Expropriation began as soon as March 1945! 231 00:25:11,280 --> 00:25:14,160 There was a special decree of the Romanian government, 232 00:25:14,400 --> 00:25:17,560 directing that ONLY Germans were expropriated. 233 00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:21,280 Those Romanians who had property were not expropriated before 1948. 234 00:25:21,560 --> 00:25:27,280 For a Banat Swabian, the land, his land was actually everything 235 00:25:28,320 --> 00:25:30,040 People simply didn't get that. 236 00:25:30,280 --> 00:25:35,360 As soon as my great-grandmother heard that our land was gone, 237 00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:41,200 that it had been nationalised, expropriated, she kept saying: 238 00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:48,040 No! That cannot be. We are in the land register! 239 00:25:49,160 --> 00:25:55,320 She could not understand that one's land could be registered 240 00:25:55,560 --> 00:25:58,760 and then someone could come and say: 241 00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:01,600 This doesn't belong to you anymore, 242 00:26:01,840 --> 00:26:07,640 now you are at best a wage worker on your own land. 243 00:26:08,160 --> 00:26:12,600 So that was a huge blow to our confidence. 244 00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:25,640 After the war everyone tried to make do somehow in this country, 245 00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:29,800 although they had been expropriated. 246 00:26:29,960 --> 00:26:33,560 According to the motto life must go on, 247 00:26:34,120 --> 00:26:39,280 people tried to make the best of the situation they were in. 248 00:26:49,280 --> 00:26:52,720 - Hello Hansi! - Hello Franz! 249 00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:02,920 I went to his house to say goodbye. 250 00:27:03,760 --> 00:27:09,120 I cried, we had grown up together. 251 00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:22,880 Plastic windows... 252 00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:39,920 See... Here lies Katharina Bittenbinder. 253 00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:42,760 She was his wife, my grandfather's. 254 00:27:42,960 --> 00:27:44,760 But she died in Germany. 255 00:27:45,520 --> 00:27:48,800 And now we want to bring my mother here, too. 256 00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:51,680 She also died in Germany. 257 00:27:52,360 --> 00:27:54,680 And then we're all here! 258 00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:04,000 My mother told me that, when she was deported to Russia, 259 00:28:04,240 --> 00:28:07,080 some 55-year-old women and 13-year-old girls went as well. 260 00:28:07,560 --> 00:28:12,000 Some pregnant women were taken too, although they should have been exempted, 261 00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:14,680 or women with children less than one year old. 262 00:28:15,560 --> 00:28:20,240 They even deported two mentally disabled people, 263 00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:22,720 who died miserably there, of course. 264 00:28:23,200 --> 00:28:26,080 Wiseschdia had about 500 inhabitants. 265 00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:31,840 All in all, around 200 people disappeared from Wiseschdia alone. 266 00:28:32,520 --> 00:28:36,280 Only men over 45 267 00:28:36,480 --> 00:28:39,880 and women over 30 were left in the village, and the children. 268 00:28:40,080 --> 00:28:44,240 Besides them, all these villages were practically depopulated! 269 00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:21,840 While being transported to Russia, between 15 January and ! 270 00:29:22,040 --> 00:29:28,560 ! it lasted until 7 February 1945, when they arrived there ! 271 00:29:29,760 --> 00:29:35,280 my mother found out that she was pregnant - she missed her period. 272 00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:39,720 Less than nine months later, on 30 September, 273 00:29:40,040 --> 00:29:44,440 I was born in Nakievo, in eastern Ukraine. 274 00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:50,080 She had taken two pictures of her daughters with her 275 00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:55,760 and ! on the day of my birth 276 00:29:57,320 --> 00:30:00,040 and then during her journey home ! 277 00:30:00,240 --> 00:30:04,160 she wrote this text on the back of these pictures: 278 00:30:05,720 --> 00:30:10,360 Today, 30 September 1945, my little Hartwig Joseph was born. 279 00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:15,440 I see him beside me, a small helpless human being, 280 00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:18,600 so gentle and sweet like a flower. 281 00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:24,760 After these bitter agonizing days, I feel deeply happy 282 00:30:25,160 --> 00:30:27,800 that I may hold him in my arms. 283 00:30:27,960 --> 00:30:31,960 He is my everything, the only thing I have here. 284 00:30:33,440 --> 00:30:36,520 How happy ! she now speaks directly to her children ! 285 00:30:36,960 --> 00:30:40,360 how happy was I with both of you too, my little girls. 286 00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:42,600 But I was not alone then! 287 00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:48,080 There were so many people there who loved us more than one can say. 288 00:30:49,640 --> 00:30:53,880 I am alone here ! here she changes perspective again and addresses her mother, 289 00:30:54,200 --> 00:30:57,160 I am alone here, mother dear. 290 00:30:57,400 --> 00:31:00,240 You don't know what it's like to be so alone. 291 00:31:00,640 --> 00:31:04,960 And when I look at this photo of my sweet lovely little girls, 292 00:31:05,360 --> 00:31:09,040 then this great sorrow presses upon me twice as hard. 293 00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:13,840 Only when I am with you once again, will I thank our Lord for every day 294 00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:19,320 that He allows me to live with my loved ones in our homeland. 295 00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:35,400 This picture was taken in the autumn of 1946, so some 7 or 8 months 296 00:31:35,800 --> 00:31:42,440 after I had returned home to Romania from the Soviet deportation, 297 00:31:42,960 --> 00:31:45,720 with my mother, who is holding me in her arms here. 298 00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:49,160 Today we see the Frankfurt skyline in the background. 299 00:31:49,440 --> 00:31:53,440 In 1946, no one could have imagined that!!! 300 00:31:56,520 --> 00:32:01,320 One more thing! There was this Baragan action in 1951, 301 00:32:01,520 --> 00:32:04,480 the relocation of the Banat Swabians 302 00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:09,320 who lived 30 km from the Serbian border. 303 00:32:09,640 --> 00:32:12,680 They were abandoned in the middle of the Baragan steppe, 304 00:32:12,840 --> 00:32:15,400 where they spent their first winter in earth houses. 305 00:32:15,880 --> 00:32:22,880 After this, their trust in Romanians or in that society was totally lost. 306 00:32:44,280 --> 00:32:48,840 They broke down gates and doors in the middle of the night 307 00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:51,760 and they were suddenly there, these soldiers with their weapons 308 00:32:51,920 --> 00:32:54,680 and none of us knew what was going on. 309 00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:58,720 Then, within 2 hours' time they were all gone. 310 00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:02,360 20 kilos each ! that is all that those poor people could take with them. 311 00:33:02,520 --> 00:33:04,560 Then they were loaded into cattle wagons. 312 00:33:04,760 --> 00:33:08,480 They waited 2 or 3 more days at the train station. 313 00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:11,960 Then at some point they left, 314 00:33:12,360 --> 00:33:16,240 loud sirens shrieking all around. 315 00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:20,560 My mother suffered all her life because, whenever a train came, 316 00:33:20,760 --> 00:33:24,760 she could still hear this locomotive. 317 00:33:25,040 --> 00:33:29,040 That night was frightening to everyone in the community. 318 00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:33,960 About a third of the people there were deported to the Baragan Plain. 319 00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:37,480 That is the so-called Romanian Siberia. 320 00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:41,760 After 5 months we heard that my great-grandfather had frozen to death. 321 00:33:42,040 --> 00:33:46,240 I regard it as a great injustice that we, the Banat Swabians, 322 00:33:46,480 --> 00:33:50,320 should have been thrown into the same pot with Nazi Germany. 323 00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:53,720 We, the Banat Swabians, 324 00:33:53,920 --> 00:33:56,800 started neither the First -, nor the Second World War. 325 00:33:57,120 --> 00:34:00,160 But we were held responsible. 326 00:34:00,560 --> 00:34:03,960 That left me deeply scarred and made me think: 327 00:34:04,240 --> 00:34:06,280 you need to leave this place at some point. 328 00:34:07,520 --> 00:34:10,240 And then sport came to my rescue. 329 00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:14,880 The Floreasca sports hall in the capital. 330 00:34:15,280 --> 00:34:16,960 The Romanian handball players ! in white T-shirts ! 331 00:34:17,160 --> 00:34:19,840 have successfully re-entered the arena of world supremacy. 332 00:34:20,160 --> 00:34:24,480 Graduation exam: the difficult match against the world champions, 333 00:34:24,680 --> 00:34:27,760 the Czechoslovakian team, was won definitively by the Romanian players 334 00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:29,320 with a score of 21 to 13! 335 00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:37,960 I was seen as an unpolished diamond 336 00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:43,520 who could, later on, hold the flag of Romanian sport a little higher. 337 00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:48,240 So I enjoyed certain privileges in this state that, 338 00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:54,920 because of my ethnic origins, did not like me so much. 339 00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:01,960 Then we went on a tournament to Hamburg, Essen Rheinhausen, Köln. 340 00:35:02,200 --> 00:35:05,440 I stayed with the team ! we won all the matches! 341 00:35:07,720 --> 00:35:09,560 I was standing there as a German 342 00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:15,680 and they played the Romanian anthem. We all sang it. Me too! 343 00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:21,000 Then the German anthem was played in Kiel or somewhere else 344 00:35:21,720 --> 00:35:23,480 You know how the verse goes: 345 00:35:23,640 --> 00:35:25,840 Two souls are dwelling in my breast! 346 00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:27,480 Well, it wasn't easy. 347 00:35:28,560 --> 00:35:32,360 I defected in Köln, at midnight sharp. 348 00:35:34,880 --> 00:35:36,560 I had no idea about these things. 349 00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:39,960 I went to a man in a pub and asked him: 350 00:35:40,160 --> 00:35:41,960 Do you have your car here? 351 00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:46,240 He confirmed and then things took their course. 352 00:35:53,720 --> 00:35:55,440 I was separated from my family... 353 00:35:56,040 --> 00:36:00,240 I assumed that I wouldn't get to see my parents and my sister, 354 00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:04,920 ! to whom I was very attached, for the rest of my life. 355 00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:10,360 Of course, my father lost his position as a doctor. 356 00:36:10,600 --> 00:36:13,000 That was a huge problem. 357 00:36:14,520 --> 00:36:18,320 The death penalty was actually given for what I had done: 358 00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:20,800 defecting to the West. 359 00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:26,560 Since I was a soldier, I would have been condemned to death. 360 00:36:27,960 --> 00:36:29,560 European Cup finals. 361 00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:32,400 Hans Günther Schmidt in the centre. 362 00:36:35,360 --> 00:36:37,800 He is the goal scorer of his club [Vfl Gummersbach]. 363 00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:42,720 9 goals in the European Cup finals against Steaua Bucharest alone! 364 00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:46,320 Hansi Schmidt was above all ! for me, of course, 365 00:36:46,520 --> 00:36:50,200 ! less so for Genscher, who was not so enthusiastic about sport ! 366 00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:53,960 so for me, he was an important and well-known figure in handball. 367 00:36:54,480 --> 00:36:57,080 We knew that he had come here with the Romanian team, 368 00:36:57,320 --> 00:37:02,040 that he had defected and had then been sentenced in Romania. 369 00:37:03,200 --> 00:37:06,560 Then there were extensive amnesty negotiations, 370 00:37:06,800 --> 00:37:08,720 which also cost a lot of money. 371 00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:14,120 The solution was to have Hansi Schmidt given amnesty and thus remove the obstacle 372 00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:19,880 that prevented his parents' and his sister's emigration from Romania. 373 00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:23,040 And it worked. 374 00:37:23,200 --> 00:37:26,800 We said that if they were allowed to leave, 375 00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:31,280 we would make another special payment, which we did. 376 00:37:31,960 --> 00:37:33,040 Hansi Schmidt again! 377 00:37:33,200 --> 00:37:35,400 Yes, the Gummersbacher is really first class! 378 00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:40,840 If I remember well, we paid the equivalent cost of a dentist's equipment: 379 00:37:41,440 --> 00:37:43,760 70.000 ! 72.000 DM. 380 00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:15,080 The fact is that Romanians have fled 381 00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:20,240 and all the German Saxons from Romania have gone away and left the land empty... 382 00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:23,320 So why wonder now that there are more gypsies? 383 00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:26,000 I mean, it is pure mathematics. 384 00:38:26,240 --> 00:38:30,120 That is why there are so many gypsies, because everyone else has fled. 385 00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:49,840 So this was the rear side, the bellows of the organ. 386 00:38:50,680 --> 00:38:54,760 That was probably the upper side... of the bellows, 387 00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:56,880 which was used to pump. 388 00:38:57,040 --> 00:38:59,680 And this used to be there, at the back. 389 00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:04,880 I remember, when we were children, you also helped pump air into the organ 390 00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:09,160 We would do that every now and then. 391 00:39:21,560 --> 00:39:25,560 When I left in 1979, it looked as if it would be another 200 years 392 00:39:25,720 --> 00:39:30,440 before all the Saxons in Transylvania could leave. 393 00:39:30,840 --> 00:39:32,560 And a lot of them wanted to leave! 394 00:39:32,840 --> 00:39:36,280 But then it went quite fast. 395 00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:41,600 Twelve years later, here in this village... 396 00:39:42,080 --> 00:39:44,800 ... there were practically no Saxons left. 397 00:39:53,720 --> 00:39:55,160 I had a price. 398 00:39:55,400 --> 00:40:01,640 But when I think that it was somewhere between 2 and 10 thousand DM, 399 00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:07,200 then we were sold quite cheaply, weren't we? 400 00:40:13,880 --> 00:40:18,320 In the 70's, a lot of Transylvanians wanted to leave Romania. 401 00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:23,000 Some, for economic reasons, 402 00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:25,960 others for the love of freedom, more or less. 403 00:40:26,160 --> 00:40:30,160 I left because I could not stand the lying anymore 404 00:40:30,400 --> 00:40:33,680 and I wanted to travel and see the world. 405 00:40:40,440 --> 00:40:44,440 If you can travel ! that is how I imagined it ! 406 00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:49,040 then you can come back at some point. 407 00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:52,040 Or you may travel a lot and never come back 408 00:40:52,280 --> 00:40:54,800 because you have found something better somewhere else. 409 00:40:54,960 --> 00:40:58,960 But freedom means being allowed to decide for yourself 410 00:40:59,240 --> 00:41:03,240 where you want to settle down and try your luck. 411 00:41:25,800 --> 00:41:29,280 There was this slogan ! Helmut Schmidt, take us with you! 412 00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:31,960 and on the German side there was the statement in the press: 413 00:41:32,160 --> 00:41:34,920 The Chancellor has taken care of it. 414 00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:38,000 I could not comment on that. And I did not. 415 00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:42,040 ... humanitarian issues that regard family reunification 416 00:41:42,280 --> 00:41:45,640 and marriages between citizens of both countries, 417 00:41:45,840 --> 00:41:50,840 based on resolutions confirmed by bilateral and international documents 418 00:41:51,040 --> 00:41:55,920 will continue to be handled in good faith. 419 00:41:56,320 --> 00:42:01,040 They really swindled him. First they raised the price per capita. 420 00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:06,600 Then, there was no guarantee regarding the number of emigrations. 421 00:42:07,320 --> 00:42:09,360 That was already bad enough. 422 00:42:10,080 --> 00:42:13,760 The existence in Romania 423 00:42:14,240 --> 00:42:18,080 of a nationality of German origin, 424 00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:20,280 today Romanian citizens, 425 00:42:20,520 --> 00:42:25,440 should constitute a bridge in developing the relations 426 00:42:25,720 --> 00:42:30,720 between Romania and the Federal Republic of Germany. 427 00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:35,640 I really did not get my hopes up. 428 00:42:35,880 --> 00:42:40,400 I already had a plan to get out one way or another. 429 00:42:40,720 --> 00:42:46,480 I had had enough of the workers' and peasants' paradise! 430 00:42:47,080 --> 00:42:54,000 That was one of my strongest reasons: to get away from the fabrications. 431 00:43:01,040 --> 00:43:04,040 In the last couple of years before my departure, 432 00:43:04,240 --> 00:43:07,160 during and after my military service, 433 00:43:07,400 --> 00:43:11,160 I had recurring contacts with the secret police. 434 00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:18,800 It's known that most people who talked to the Securitate were informers. 435 00:43:19,120 --> 00:43:21,800 Otherwise, the Securitate came and broke your teeth. 436 00:43:22,040 --> 00:43:26,360 How come they did not break your teeth? So you must have been an informer, right? 437 00:43:28,360 --> 00:43:32,360 They hinted repeatedly that we could actually work well together 438 00:43:32,600 --> 00:43:36,600 and that it would be mutually advantageous. 439 00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:41,520 I always played the card of my nationality and said: 440 00:43:41,800 --> 00:43:44,080 How come you want a German? 441 00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:47,040 How come you want me as a collaborator 442 00:43:47,280 --> 00:43:49,960 when my relatives are in Germany?" 443 00:43:50,840 --> 00:43:54,840 Those were considered the least safe people, the greatest traitors 444 00:43:55,040 --> 00:43:58,000 But apparently they wanted me for that very reason. 445 00:43:58,240 --> 00:44:03,120 What bothered me most was their deviousness ! the fact 446 00:44:03,720 --> 00:44:08,800 that they were always so subtle and got you into embarrassing situations 447 00:44:09,040 --> 00:44:13,640 in front of your colleagues, friends and relatives. 448 00:44:17,680 --> 00:44:21,240 In 1979 I arranged to escape with a friend. 449 00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:26,360 We planned it in detail and when the decision was made, 450 00:44:26,680 --> 00:44:32,720 we left Sighișoara quite easily and a couple of days later 451 00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:36,600 we crossed the green border into Yugoslavia. 452 00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:40,720 I was glad to be alive, 453 00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:44,280 and that my bones were sound and that I still had my teeth! 454 00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:52,960 One evening a couple of weeks later, a fellow from the Securitate, 455 00:44:53,200 --> 00:44:56,560 whom I knew, came with another one to my grandfather's door ! 456 00:44:56,760 --> 00:45:00,760 ! that was in Lörrach [Germany], for I was living at his place. 457 00:45:02,160 --> 00:45:06,160 They wanted to recruit me, they wanted me to work with them, 458 00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:08,800 for the good of Romania. 459 00:45:08,960 --> 00:45:14,760 Probably in Germany, as a Romanian agent. 460 00:45:15,560 --> 00:45:18,800 It wasn't difficult for me to get rid of them. 461 00:45:18,960 --> 00:45:22,400 They went away and I never heard from them again. 462 00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:34,320 Then I left Germany for Switzerland and worked there. 463 00:45:34,600 --> 00:45:37,280 In 1980 I left for Canada. 464 00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:46,360 Something bothered me in Germany. 465 00:45:46,600 --> 00:45:50,440 It was not that half-utopian country that the Saxons, 466 00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:54,800 the ethnic Germans, had dreamt of. 467 00:45:57,920 --> 00:46:00,560 Something was missing. 468 00:46:01,120 --> 00:46:04,800 The human factor, as Graham Greene called it. 469 00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:08,720 Something that should be there. 470 00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:13,240 It is not enough to have a full fridge, to drive the newest car. 471 00:46:13,560 --> 00:46:15,960 What is missing is the human element 472 00:46:40,680 --> 00:46:43,560 I am very grateful that ! 473 00:46:44,520 --> 00:46:48,920 this sounds really cynical now, but that's how it is ! 474 00:46:49,360 --> 00:46:56,520 that history took the course that it actually did. 475 00:47:11,560 --> 00:47:13,600 I liked to dress well and 476 00:47:13,800 --> 00:47:17,600 wanted to stand out through clothes that came from the West, 477 00:47:17,840 --> 00:47:20,360 for then I would be somehow different, 478 00:47:20,600 --> 00:47:23,040 probably ! I felt ! somewhat better. 479 00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:26,840 That's what I wanted when I was eighteen. 480 00:47:29,600 --> 00:47:35,960 Germany was the country where you could shop to your heart's desire. 481 00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:40,080 I can still well remember a Neckermann slogan: 482 00:47:40,640 --> 00:47:44,640 If to Gina you aspire, Neckermann's for your attire! 483 00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:46,960 They meant Gina Lollobrigida. 484 00:47:47,160 --> 00:47:49,800 And I clearly aspired to Gina! 485 00:47:50,040 --> 00:47:54,600 So I was craving this consumerism! 486 00:48:04,840 --> 00:48:08,640 If the devil had proposed a pact to me, running something like this: 487 00:48:08,880 --> 00:48:12,720 Hartwig, you now have the opportunity to dispense with your past, 488 00:48:13,040 --> 00:48:17,680 with the last 31 years, and replace them 489 00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:21,640 with a purely German experience. 490 00:48:21,920 --> 00:48:26,280 You have no more Romanian background, 491 00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:33,040 I would have accepted this offer with delight in 1976. 492 00:48:34,360 --> 00:48:38,360 Only later did I gradually begin to discover 493 00:48:38,680 --> 00:48:44,760 what a huge treasure it was, and still is, to have this particular background, 494 00:48:45,400 --> 00:48:52,240 namely not altogether German, 495 00:48:52,800 --> 00:48:56,640 not purely German. 496 00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:02,640 And in no way, IN NO WAY, would I want to do away with that. 497 00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:13,960 I am glad that I spent my childhood in Banat and not somewhere in Hessen 498 00:49:14,920 --> 00:49:17,520 and this because I was very well prepared 499 00:49:17,760 --> 00:49:21,480 for the globalised world due to my experience in Banat, 500 00:49:21,720 --> 00:49:26,640 where there were so many national minorities. 501 00:49:42,160 --> 00:49:47,800 My sister came to Romania and took pictures of me. 502 00:49:48,280 --> 00:49:50,160 My sister's boyfriend 503 00:49:50,400 --> 00:49:55,160 went to the passport issuing authority in Frankfurt with my pictures 504 00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:58,840 and applied for a passport with my photos. 505 00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:04,520 Since we were of similar ages and heights, no one noticed. 506 00:50:05,120 --> 00:50:09,520 I had booked a trip to the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, 507 00:50:09,960 --> 00:50:16,600 without an overnight stay ! a 16-hour trip that was approved. 508 00:50:17,480 --> 00:50:23,600 Then in Bulgaria I took his passport and went to Istanbul with it. 509 00:50:24,480 --> 00:50:29,360 And in Istanbul I went to the Hilton Hotel 510 00:50:29,800 --> 00:50:34,920 and I spent two nights there, looking onto the Bosphorus. 511 00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:38,200 I really thought I was entitled to that! 512 00:50:39,680 --> 00:50:44,600 I am frightened when I think about it today, but that's the way it was. 513 00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:55,240 This reconstructed mediaeval tower is what I imagined Germany to be. 514 00:50:56,760 --> 00:51:01,200 These skyscrapers were not here in 1976 yet. 515 00:51:01,760 --> 00:51:03,960 Not one of them, I think! 516 00:51:06,960 --> 00:51:11,360 I was 31 years old back then, I was healthy, well trained. 517 00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:16,240 A couple of years later I already started to pay taxes ! 518 00:51:16,440 --> 00:51:18,760 ! quite steep taxes! 519 00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:21,440 I think I was a good deal. 520 00:51:36,520 --> 00:51:38,960 If I had something of a cultural shock, 521 00:51:39,200 --> 00:51:42,720 it was the permanent building sites in Frankfurt. 522 00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:47,600 Building sites everywhere! And it is the same today. 523 00:51:48,200 --> 00:51:51,200 Then at some point I complained and someone told me: 524 00:51:51,400 --> 00:51:54,720 that's the way it has to be in healthy capitalism. Building all the time. 525 00:51:54,960 --> 00:51:58,960 If nothing is being built, then it is not good! It seems to be true. 526 00:52:28,160 --> 00:52:34,240 In fact, in Germany too, as Jack, the normal consumer, 527 00:52:34,920 --> 00:52:38,920 you are nothing more than just that ! a consumer. 528 00:52:39,440 --> 00:52:42,320 The man who goes to work in order to earn money 529 00:52:42,560 --> 00:52:45,400 so that he can come home and spend it as fast as possible, 530 00:52:45,680 --> 00:52:48,920 so that he can go back to work the following day, 531 00:52:49,120 --> 00:52:52,480 so that he can have more money in order to buy himself something else 532 00:52:52,680 --> 00:52:55,960 that he absolutely needs and without which he cannot live. 533 00:53:03,080 --> 00:53:05,840 I only want to have a small farm. 534 00:53:06,680 --> 00:53:08,800 That is why I had a reason 535 00:53:09,040 --> 00:53:11,560 to come back to Transylvania and to Romania, 536 00:53:11,880 --> 00:53:14,760 because agriculture is really neglected here. 537 00:53:14,960 --> 00:53:17,480 If you think how much unused land there is here, 538 00:53:17,720 --> 00:53:22,080 how many people work in other countries to earn a couple of euros 539 00:53:22,560 --> 00:53:24,320 and here everything lies untilled 540 00:53:24,600 --> 00:53:26,880 It is a country with a future. 541 00:53:27,080 --> 00:53:30,760 Therefore, the future does not lie in the West for me anymore, 542 00:53:31,600 --> 00:53:35,680 but in the East. That is, in Transylvania. 543 00:53:46,320 --> 00:53:49,320 The decay of the country happened gradually, 544 00:53:50,280 --> 00:53:57,480 so that one could not quite perceive its scope. 545 00:53:57,960 --> 00:54:01,960 But in the early 80's everything happened so fast 546 00:54:03,760 --> 00:54:05,680 It was the showdown! 547 00:54:21,080 --> 00:54:24,960 And suddenly we read in the newspaper and heard on the radio 548 00:54:25,360 --> 00:54:29,840 that the Romanian state had issued a decree 549 00:54:30,160 --> 00:54:34,080 stating that Germans were allowed to emigrate 550 00:54:34,280 --> 00:54:38,800 only after they had paid back all their education costs. 551 00:54:39,160 --> 00:54:42,480 This would have been a very large sum of money for us, 552 00:54:42,880 --> 00:54:45,200 so we would definitely not been able to pay anymore. 553 00:54:45,720 --> 00:54:49,960 And suddenly the state requires you to pay your tuition fees 554 00:54:50,200 --> 00:54:51,920 in foreign currency. 555 00:54:52,840 --> 00:54:58,160 And it was known that this foreign currency 556 00:54:58,440 --> 00:55:03,120 could be obtained either from relatives abroad, 557 00:55:03,720 --> 00:55:07,240 or from the black market. Both ! illegally. 558 00:55:09,080 --> 00:55:15,520 And I spoke to many people: there was general panic! 559 00:55:21,360 --> 00:55:25,600 We would not have wanted the intellectuals ! the engineers, the teachers... 560 00:55:25,880 --> 00:55:28,960 ... the lawyers etc. to leave. It is normal! 561 00:55:29,200 --> 00:55:31,880 After having studied free of charge... 562 00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:35,720 For both parties admitted to this: 563 00:55:36,000 --> 00:55:41,520 here you did not pay for high-school, university, Ph.D's and all that. 564 00:55:41,880 --> 00:55:43,720 On the contrary. They were given stipends. 565 00:55:43,920 --> 00:55:45,920 So they were even subsidised! 566 00:55:46,240 --> 00:55:48,320 That is a beautiful lie of the Romanians. 567 00:55:48,560 --> 00:55:52,560 First of all, there were many children; there were many retired people. 568 00:55:52,800 --> 00:55:59,600 The proportion of active population was perhaps a third or a quarter. 569 00:56:00,360 --> 00:56:03,000 We took over the entire burden of retired persons. 570 00:56:03,240 --> 00:56:07,240 We took over the entire burden of the children's education, costs included. 571 00:56:07,680 --> 00:56:13,520 I do not mean burden as imposition, but as expenses. 572 00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:17,800 We were supposedly getting trained people in return. 573 00:56:18,040 --> 00:56:22,320 We could not employ a Romanian teacher here ! even if he was German. 574 00:56:22,640 --> 00:56:24,680 He needed qualifications for that. 575 00:56:25,040 --> 00:56:28,800 These people did not have the money to pay. 576 00:56:30,280 --> 00:56:33,320 So I made a point of this to Ceausescu, so that he should understand 577 00:56:33,560 --> 00:56:39,280 that we did want the people, on the one hand, 578 00:56:39,600 --> 00:56:41,960 but that he should not exaggerate. 579 00:56:42,360 --> 00:56:45,080 The press should write better about our relations. 580 00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:47,960 They always write about what happens. 581 00:56:48,200 --> 00:56:54,240 The more journalists attend, the more balanced coverage we get. 582 00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:02,400 We have found a loanword for that, that is: plurality! 583 00:57:02,640 --> 00:57:05,680 Yes, but let them write the truth! 584 00:57:07,680 --> 00:57:11,680 The ultimate truth, Mr. President, we are in search of. 585 00:57:12,840 --> 00:57:16,320 German foreign minister Genscher negotiated with Romanian president Ceausescu 586 00:57:16,560 --> 00:57:19,720 that the special tax collected over the past months 587 00:57:19,960 --> 00:57:22,440 from Romanians willing to leave the country should be abolished. 588 00:57:22,720 --> 00:57:25,440 Romania had called the now abolished special claim 589 00:57:25,640 --> 00:57:27,880 from emigrants tax on education. 590 00:57:28,200 --> 00:57:31,960 Germany officially announced: Genscher has achieved this. 591 00:57:32,160 --> 00:57:33,800 It was not the case. 592 00:57:33,960 --> 00:57:36,360 It had been stipulated in the agreement for a long time. 593 00:57:36,560 --> 00:57:39,880 The price was the increase of the cost per capita. 594 00:57:57,760 --> 00:57:59,480 Do you want to buy vegetables? 595 00:57:59,720 --> 00:58:02,240 No, but this is worth looking at. 596 00:58:08,440 --> 00:58:11,960 Look, they have lamb gigot. And lamb chops. 597 00:58:12,360 --> 00:58:14,120 But you have to be able to cook it. 598 00:58:14,320 --> 00:58:17,360 42 Euros a kilo!!! 599 00:58:19,280 --> 00:58:20,480 Crazy! 600 00:58:22,400 --> 00:58:28,240 People came from Germany saying my horse, my car etc. 601 00:58:29,400 --> 00:58:32,880 and did not say a word about the rest: 602 00:58:33,600 --> 00:58:36,800 Watch out, homesickness will be a problem. 603 00:58:37,520 --> 00:58:40,680 They will not welcome you with open arms. 604 00:58:40,920 --> 00:58:44,000 You go there and you want something. No one said that. 605 00:58:44,240 --> 00:58:46,600 Not that it would have stopped us. 606 00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:50,800 There was simply no freedom to breathe! 607 00:58:52,760 --> 00:58:53,960 Black! 608 00:59:08,600 --> 00:59:11,280 ... a little shadow here... 609 00:59:19,320 --> 00:59:23,520 When you go to a concert that you like, which touches you 610 00:59:24,040 --> 00:59:26,720 words are almost powerless. 611 00:59:27,520 --> 00:59:29,360 Only the feelings matter. 612 00:59:29,600 --> 00:59:31,760 It is stupid to say It was overwhelming! 613 00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:33,960 Maybe it is an exaggeration. 614 00:59:39,520 --> 00:59:41,360 It is difficult to define. 615 00:59:43,360 --> 00:59:45,720 Yes, homeland is like music. 616 00:59:55,320 --> 00:59:59,760 We did not know that Germany was paying for us. 617 01:00:00,120 --> 01:00:01,760 We were not aware of it. 618 01:00:01,960 --> 01:00:03,640 Maybe towards the end 619 01:00:04,440 --> 01:00:10,800 But we did not make the difference between the two types of payment. 620 01:00:11,160 --> 01:00:15,640 We thought that if we were paying, that was all there was to it. 621 01:00:29,840 --> 01:00:33,520 I got into this passport business. Let's call it a business. 622 01:00:33,760 --> 01:00:35,560 The Germans were so naïve, 623 01:00:35,800 --> 01:00:39,800 that if you entered their yard and said: Listen, do you want to leave? 624 01:00:40,040 --> 01:00:42,680 they would look at you and give you the money in 5 seconds. 625 01:00:42,920 --> 01:00:44,600 And so I started little by little 626 01:00:44,840 --> 01:00:48,920 and got to figures you would be astonished to hear. 627 01:00:49,560 --> 01:00:51,320 What range of figures are we talking about? 628 01:00:54,080 --> 01:00:56,000 You can imagine I didn't keep track. 629 01:00:57,760 --> 01:01:00,840 But I would estimate in the millions! 630 01:01:01,040 --> 01:01:06,520 Tens of millions of Deutschmarks, around 7 billion Lei 631 01:01:06,920 --> 01:01:09,320 The German state was paying an amount, 632 01:01:09,560 --> 01:01:11,600 and probably the Romanian Communist Party, 633 01:01:11,800 --> 01:01:13,600 through its good leaders, 634 01:01:13,840 --> 01:01:17,320 was careful to round the sum. 635 01:01:17,560 --> 01:01:20,120 And let me tell you one more thing: no member of the Securitate 636 01:01:20,360 --> 01:01:24,960 or the Police could work without the backing of RCP, 637 01:01:25,240 --> 01:01:27,280 the Romanian Communist Party. 638 01:01:27,560 --> 01:01:29,040 And there, 639 01:01:29,280 --> 01:01:32,200 ! pardon my French, which might not go well with television ! 640 01:01:32,440 --> 01:01:36,240 there were some cavemen saying: More! Faster! Better! 641 01:01:44,520 --> 01:01:46,960 Things always revolved around two people, 642 01:01:47,160 --> 01:01:51,160 whose names were repeatedly mentioned: Bogdan and Capraru. 643 01:02:00,040 --> 01:02:02,400 This is Nicolae Capraru's house. 644 01:02:02,600 --> 01:02:05,920 Here was the springboard for the Germans, in this house. 645 01:02:06,240 --> 01:02:08,080 It has an entrance in this street, 646 01:02:08,320 --> 01:02:10,920 where they would go in, and an exit in the other street. 647 01:02:11,160 --> 01:02:16,400 Capraru worked with a Securitate officer whom I knew very well. 648 01:02:16,680 --> 01:02:20,480 He told me to keep an eye on him, to take care of him... 649 01:02:20,720 --> 01:02:23,320 How could I keep an eye on him? The Germans were going in 650 01:02:23,520 --> 01:02:27,520 as if it had been Mecca. 20, 30, 50 of them every day. To pay. 651 01:02:28,120 --> 01:02:33,960 Then we rang. At the fence. The house was a little farther away. 652 01:02:34,200 --> 01:02:39,080 And then this man came out, walking slowly, grumpily. 653 01:02:41,320 --> 01:02:43,320 What did he say? Ce vreti? 654 01:02:43,520 --> 01:02:44,600 What do you want? 655 01:02:45,040 --> 01:02:46,480 We want to go to Germany. 656 01:02:46,680 --> 01:02:47,720 Education? 657 01:02:48,400 --> 01:02:50,840 Philology: 14,000 DM. 658 01:02:52,200 --> 01:02:54,600 Polytechnics: 16,000 DM. 659 01:02:54,960 --> 01:02:57,320 Children? 10 years old. They don't have to pay. 660 01:03:00,520 --> 01:03:03,840 For me it was 6,000 DM. For my husband, who had a degree: 12,000 DM. 661 01:03:04,160 --> 01:03:08,160 So a total of 18,000 DM. The daughter was still a minor. 662 01:03:08,360 --> 01:03:09,840 She did not have to pay. 663 01:03:10,080 --> 01:03:14,720 The kitchen table was a greenish wooden table. 664 01:03:14,960 --> 01:03:20,720 And on it ! plenty of one hundred DM notes. 665 01:03:21,320 --> 01:03:24,880 All blue. In little stacks, but this high. 666 01:03:27,920 --> 01:03:30,800 The recklessness of the payments 667 01:03:31,360 --> 01:03:35,000 and the lack of any guarantee 668 01:03:35,400 --> 01:03:38,480 You didn't even get a receipt or anything! 669 01:03:38,680 --> 01:03:41,720 You just gave him 15,000 DM... 670 01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:44,720 and he lived in an absolutely regular house 671 01:03:46,320 --> 01:03:49,360 I had also heard of people who had already paid 672 01:03:49,560 --> 01:03:54,800 and had been waiting for their passport for 10 years and it had not come 673 01:03:54,960 --> 01:03:58,560 I had no confidence in that system. 674 01:03:58,840 --> 01:04:02,560 I did not know about that; it would only have increased my aversion. 675 01:04:02,840 --> 01:04:05,120 But that would not have made a difference. 676 01:04:05,360 --> 01:04:07,560 I was not a key minister or a major politician, 677 01:04:07,760 --> 01:04:10,120 but my personal aversion would have been increased, 678 01:04:10,360 --> 01:04:13,880 thinking that we have to pay a load of money to this Ceausescu, 679 01:04:14,080 --> 01:04:16,880 this unlikeable character, so we can ransom people, 680 01:04:17,160 --> 01:04:20,960 and then these people there have to pay extra money 681 01:04:21,200 --> 01:04:22,840 so they can get out of there. 682 01:04:23,040 --> 01:04:27,280 That was just an additional disgrace, to be honest. 683 01:04:27,560 --> 01:04:31,040 You should have seen the demand And I wasn't the only one handling it all. 684 01:04:31,280 --> 01:04:33,080 I told you there were several networks. 685 01:04:33,320 --> 01:04:37,320 And not only in Timisoara, but also in Brasov, Arad, Bucharest, etc. 686 01:04:38,400 --> 01:04:42,000 I stepped into a church. 687 01:04:43,560 --> 01:04:44,920 The priest went: 688 01:04:45,120 --> 01:04:48,920 We thank the Lord that there are 5,200 of us, 689 01:04:49,160 --> 01:04:51,800 we are ethnic Germans, and so on... 690 01:04:52,160 --> 01:04:56,520 A month later: We thank the Lord that there are 4.400 of us left, 691 01:04:56,760 --> 01:04:59,200 700 have gone away, etc. 692 01:04:59,600 --> 01:05:02,920 This happened once, twice and then the third time 693 01:05:03,160 --> 01:05:05,320 the priest said: Herr Bucur, when do I get to leave?" 694 01:05:05,520 --> 01:05:07,040 They knew me by now. 695 01:05:07,280 --> 01:05:10,400 Don't you think the people who'd paid waited quietly. 696 01:05:11,640 --> 01:05:14,160 I talked to him and... in the end, the priest left too. 697 01:05:14,400 --> 01:05:16,600 He just closed up shop and left. 698 01:05:40,320 --> 01:05:42,760 And then a call from Capraru! 699 01:05:43,960 --> 01:05:46,240 He had never called before. 700 01:05:46,600 --> 01:05:47,720 No, never! 701 01:05:47,920 --> 01:05:49,520 You can come now. 702 01:05:49,960 --> 01:05:56,280 So we went, buoyantly, grinning from ear to ear 703 01:05:58,720 --> 01:06:04,920 We got there and then Capraru was the first to come out. 704 01:06:05,120 --> 01:06:07,440 In handcuffs. And then Bucur came out and said: 705 01:06:07,880 --> 01:06:12,720 So! You all want to go to Germany, do you? 706 01:06:13,040 --> 01:06:18,680 I'll show you Germany, he said in his offhand manner. 707 01:06:19,760 --> 01:06:22,560 And him... him we'll lock up straight away. 708 01:06:22,800 --> 01:06:27,800 He meant Capraru. Well, that sounded convincing. 709 01:06:28,280 --> 01:06:34,640 I caught Nicolae Capraru from Timisoara red-handed, 710 01:06:34,920 --> 01:06:37,800 carrying 2,211,000 German marks. 711 01:06:38,240 --> 01:06:41,920 Of course I arrested him and took him to the Police Department in Timis 712 01:06:42,240 --> 01:06:44,240 in order to investigate him. 713 01:06:44,680 --> 01:06:47,880 But no sooner did I set foot in the Police HQ 714 01:06:48,280 --> 01:06:50,400 than I was called in for questioning. 715 01:06:51,160 --> 01:06:55,600 And my colleagues from the Securitate told me to leave Capraru alone, 716 01:06:56,160 --> 01:06:59,160 to let him go on with his business but to watch him. 717 01:07:01,120 --> 01:07:03,680 I could have lifted Capraru ! catching him with foreign currency ! 718 01:07:03,840 --> 01:07:05,560 and opened a case file on him. He would have gone to prison. 719 01:07:05,760 --> 01:07:07,760 Prosecution... all by the book. 720 01:07:08,040 --> 01:07:09,960 So that I shouldn't do that, 721 01:07:10,160 --> 01:07:12,160 they allowed me to confiscate some money from him every now and again. 722 01:07:12,360 --> 01:07:14,920 And those were, so to speak, the achievements of the Police. 723 01:07:15,560 --> 01:07:20,840 But the money came... Let's say it got into my hands. 724 01:07:21,360 --> 01:07:24,760 I had to draw up minutes and then hand it in. 725 01:07:25,040 --> 01:07:29,040 This money ended up in the Romanian Foreign Trade Bank. 726 01:07:34,080 --> 01:07:36,960 I kindly ask you to go now, people are starting to gather round. 727 01:07:37,200 --> 01:07:39,040 Three people have come out already. 728 01:07:41,320 --> 01:07:46,640 Of course it was a huge burden for the Germans who wanted to leave. 729 01:07:47,040 --> 01:07:50,800 We did not want that. And it affected our prices. 730 01:07:51,240 --> 01:07:56,160 Large sums were paid. I know cases ! 42,000 Deutschmark... 731 01:07:56,400 --> 01:07:59,760 And cases of even larger amounts have been reported. 732 01:07:59,960 --> 01:08:02,160 And we paid four, five or seven thousand! 733 01:08:02,760 --> 01:08:07,880 Those who left for good had the right to take a 70-kilo parcel. 734 01:08:08,640 --> 01:08:11,880 People who left as tourists took their bags. 735 01:08:12,080 --> 01:08:14,280 They just carried a bag and that was that. 736 01:08:16,080 --> 01:08:21,960 And then he [Bucur] came and showed us: These are your passports. 737 01:08:24,960 --> 01:08:27,000 We got tourist passports. 738 01:08:27,440 --> 01:08:32,520 We knew that we would lock up our house, 739 01:08:32,960 --> 01:08:36,800 our two-room apartment, get into the car and drive off! 740 01:08:37,120 --> 01:08:39,360 And that it would be a one-way road! 741 01:08:41,600 --> 01:08:47,840 Then, when we arrived at a transit camp in Karlsruhe, we realized: 742 01:08:48,640 --> 01:08:55,200 Goodness, we've got debts of 30,000 DM to repay to our friends! 743 01:08:55,520 --> 01:08:59,920 One of our friends had even taken a loan from the bank. 744 01:09:00,360 --> 01:09:05,560 And so, for a year we scraped money together and 745 01:09:05,800 --> 01:09:08,720 saved, saved, saved! 746 01:09:47,880 --> 01:09:51,000 On this land, Romanians, Germans, 747 01:09:51,240 --> 01:09:54,160 Hungarians and other nationalities 748 01:09:54,400 --> 01:09:57,840 have been living and working together for centuries. 749 01:09:58,080 --> 01:10:00,680 It stands to reason that everyone 750 01:10:00,880 --> 01:10:05,560 can learn in their own language in schools, 751 01:10:05,920 --> 01:10:12,680 that they can organise cultural activities in their own language. 752 01:10:13,000 --> 01:10:14,520 But also together! 753 01:10:27,040 --> 01:10:32,640 We knew that the Securitate... 754 01:10:34,800 --> 01:10:37,600 ... was keeping an eye on us. 755 01:11:02,920 --> 01:11:06,920 I think the best way to understand this 756 01:11:07,160 --> 01:11:11,560 is to read the poetry published in German in those years. 757 01:11:12,120 --> 01:11:17,000 It is imbued with melancholy and an apocalyptic atmosphere. 758 01:11:18,320 --> 01:11:20,480 And hopelessness. 759 01:11:26,920 --> 01:11:29,800 There was no meaning there. The sun was up, above the stadium. 760 01:11:30,120 --> 01:11:32,880 There had been no meaning there for a long time. 761 01:11:33,080 --> 01:11:35,280 Soon it would get cold again. 762 01:11:35,480 --> 01:11:37,880 And the next loathsome winter would come, 763 01:11:38,080 --> 01:11:41,280 and the president's next loathsome speeches 764 01:11:41,520 --> 01:11:45,600 and the next shortage, the next weeks without milk, 765 01:11:45,840 --> 01:11:47,600 the next days without bread, 766 01:11:47,840 --> 01:11:51,520 the evenings without electricity, the next media rubbish, 767 01:11:51,760 --> 01:11:57,400 the next ID check, the next humiliation and the one after that. 768 01:11:58,160 --> 01:11:59,680 It was enough. 769 01:11:59,880 --> 01:12:02,400 Stirner looked over the stadium. 770 01:12:02,760 --> 01:12:07,880 Behind it was the gloomy steaming industry, the silent country. 771 01:12:08,120 --> 01:12:12,480 He stood up, went to the cupboard, placed the typewriter on the table, 772 01:12:12,680 --> 01:12:16,680 took the cover off, inserted two sheets of paper into it, 773 01:12:17,040 --> 01:12:20,600 carbon-paper in-between, and started to type: 774 01:12:20,760 --> 01:12:22,200 To the passport office. 775 01:12:22,520 --> 01:12:26,880 We hereby apply for permanent emigration. 776 01:12:27,440 --> 01:12:30,000 Our reasons are... 777 01:12:47,440 --> 01:12:52,760 Many people risked a lot by applying for emigration. 778 01:12:52,960 --> 01:12:59,080 By applying for emigration, you became an enemy of the people. 779 01:12:59,880 --> 01:13:05,200 There was no official form by which you could apply. 780 01:13:06,080 --> 01:13:07,920 There were hand-written models; 781 01:13:08,120 --> 01:13:13,920 you knew what the application should contain from those who had applied before. 782 01:13:14,600 --> 01:13:18,360 Then one learned from clerks, typists - 783 01:13:18,600 --> 01:13:21,000 who had secretly typed 784 01:13:21,400 --> 01:13:26,200 - what this application that people filled in should contain, 785 01:13:26,520 --> 01:13:30,280 and these forms circulated on the black market. 786 01:13:33,080 --> 01:13:36,200 I applied for emigration in 1986. 787 01:13:36,600 --> 01:13:41,920 Because I couldn't see any possibility of living in this country anymore. 788 01:13:42,960 --> 01:13:46,360 We knew, for example, that we, German-speaking writers, 789 01:13:46,600 --> 01:13:50,040 would not be able to live in this country anymore. 790 01:14:08,600 --> 01:14:14,080 This railway station will stay in the memory of all the Germans in Banat, 791 01:14:14,360 --> 01:14:18,160 or of those who have emigrated. 792 01:14:18,400 --> 01:14:20,440 The night that they spent here was the night 793 01:14:20,600 --> 01:14:25,080 when they said goodbye to their relatives, 794 01:14:26,640 --> 01:14:31,160 and they always had the feeling that it was goodbye forever, 795 01:14:31,400 --> 01:14:34,280 as one didn't know back then 796 01:14:34,520 --> 01:14:37,960 whether one would ever return to this country. 797 01:14:47,240 --> 01:14:50,560 Then everything was programmed according to a certain timetable. 798 01:14:50,760 --> 01:14:53,200 People had to be there before midnight. 799 01:14:53,840 --> 01:14:56,360 The train left in the morning around 5. 800 01:14:56,760 --> 01:15:00,360 Then the relatives were all thrown out of the waiting room 801 01:15:00,600 --> 01:15:04,320 and only the person who was leaving was allowed to stay. 802 01:15:04,560 --> 01:15:08,640 Then they were lined up here on the platform, 803 01:15:09,680 --> 01:15:15,400 guarded by soldiers with machine guns and sometimes with dogs. 804 01:15:16,240 --> 01:15:22,240 Then you took your suitcase after having gone through customs. 805 01:15:22,440 --> 01:15:24,080 Then you got on the train. 806 01:15:24,320 --> 01:15:27,840 In a file and under command, 807 01:15:28,120 --> 01:15:31,720 ... like convicts. 808 01:15:32,840 --> 01:15:39,960 They made people feel that they were betraying their fatherland. 809 01:15:46,160 --> 01:15:51,280 These are emotional moments that keep coming to your mind. 810 01:15:51,520 --> 01:15:55,920 It was actually the saddest moment of the emigration, 811 01:15:56,160 --> 01:15:59,960 because you knew it was the end. 812 01:16:00,240 --> 01:16:02,120 Not the beginning! 813 01:16:09,600 --> 01:16:14,640 We left from the Curtici border crossing. 814 01:16:14,960 --> 01:16:19,720 With a heavy heart, having left half of our life back there. 815 01:16:25,760 --> 01:16:27,520 It was always so uncertain 816 01:16:27,760 --> 01:16:31,840 you didn't know when you would see each other again. 817 01:16:32,160 --> 01:16:36,000 We were tired and heading for an uncertain future. 818 01:16:36,360 --> 01:16:40,960 You also worried about the family that stayed behind. 819 01:16:41,920 --> 01:16:43,960 It was not easy. 820 01:16:46,280 --> 01:16:48,600 The bus! The bus is coming! 821 01:16:57,560 --> 01:17:00,440 We came to the country of our ancestors. 822 01:17:00,680 --> 01:17:04,080 We definitely had that feeling. We were prepared for that. 823 01:17:04,320 --> 01:17:08,480 We had always known that, we had always carried that within us. 824 01:17:08,720 --> 01:17:12,560 Namely that we had always been Germans. 825 01:17:16,280 --> 01:17:18,920 We came from the only Eastern Bloc country 826 01:17:19,120 --> 01:17:22,240 in which Germans had had the freedom to speak their language. 827 01:17:22,440 --> 01:17:26,160 We were very fortunate, we must say! 828 01:17:26,400 --> 01:17:30,400 This even included being able to take a German Abitur in Romania, 829 01:17:30,720 --> 01:17:34,320 so we didn't have any language problems. 830 01:17:34,800 --> 01:17:38,160 This was a very great advantage for us! 831 01:17:59,880 --> 01:18:02,040 The adaptation was difficult 832 01:18:02,280 --> 01:18:06,360 because things here were quite different from a dictatorship. 833 01:18:07,280 --> 01:18:12,280 But we were so positive 834 01:18:12,760 --> 01:18:17,320 and only wished to find a job 835 01:18:17,920 --> 01:18:23,400 and integrate more or less into the new environment. 836 01:18:23,920 --> 01:18:29,040 We managed to do that quite fast and well. 837 01:18:30,080 --> 01:18:35,320 And we were grateful for that. 838 01:18:39,840 --> 01:18:44,600 When the Soviet Union broke off relations with the West at the end of 1983, 839 01:18:45,720 --> 01:18:52,240 all the arrangements for visits to Germany were cancelled. 840 01:18:52,560 --> 01:18:55,040 Whether it was Honecker, who had already been invited, 841 01:18:55,280 --> 01:18:57,720 or the Polish president, whatever his name was, 842 01:18:57,920 --> 01:19:00,360 they all cancelled, under pressure from the Soviet Union. 843 01:19:00,600 --> 01:19:05,160 Only one came. Ceausescu ! whom we actually wanted the least. 844 01:19:05,520 --> 01:19:06,960 But he came! 845 01:19:17,960 --> 01:19:23,720 Kohl said: If we manage to get that hardliner, Ceausescu, to relent, 846 01:19:24,640 --> 01:19:29,360 then the last hardliner Honecker, 847 01:19:30,320 --> 01:19:32,920 in whose behaviour we are very interested, 848 01:19:33,280 --> 01:19:35,960 will not be able to resist. 849 01:19:36,160 --> 01:19:39,480 We would also make humanitarian improvements. 850 01:19:57,040 --> 01:20:01,800 This man did not accept to be dependent. 851 01:20:02,280 --> 01:20:06,160 That is, if he lacked funds, 852 01:20:07,080 --> 01:20:10,680 he would not settle matters at his own expense, 853 01:20:11,240 --> 01:20:15,320 but at the expense of his people. 854 01:20:15,520 --> 01:20:20,360 Just look at his decision to repay all the external debt of the state: 855 01:20:20,720 --> 01:20:24,760 he let his people live in such poverty! 856 01:20:25,240 --> 01:20:30,960 What people endured in Romania back then was almost unbearable. 857 01:20:31,480 --> 01:20:34,280 This man was utterly ruthless. 858 01:20:34,720 --> 01:20:40,040 Romania has no external debt left, 859 01:20:40,560 --> 01:20:45,120 it no longer pays tribute to anyone and is truly independent, 860 01:20:45,480 --> 01:20:48,200 both economically and politically! 861 01:20:53,520 --> 01:20:57,520 Oddly enough, it wasn't just us, but the entire population 862 01:20:57,880 --> 01:21:01,880 who were convinced that it could not go on like this. 863 01:21:02,120 --> 01:21:06,120 On the other hand, however, people lived with the fear 864 01:21:06,400 --> 01:21:09,520 that this regime would last forever. 865 01:21:10,520 --> 01:21:12,840 So this was a contradiction in itself: 866 01:21:13,040 --> 01:21:18,760 they saw the end but they were also afraid that it wouldn't come. 867 01:21:19,960 --> 01:21:23,520 And that it would get even worse. 868 01:21:23,760 --> 01:21:27,240 The whole country suffered from a psychosis of fear 869 01:21:27,480 --> 01:21:29,760 and despair, of bitterness. 870 01:21:30,040 --> 01:21:32,080 There was an apocalyptic atmosphere! 871 01:22:08,520 --> 01:22:12,320 He terminated our agreement on 4 December 1989 872 01:22:12,560 --> 01:22:17,120 and fell from power on 20-22 December. 873 01:22:19,000 --> 01:22:23,360 Dear viewers, Nicolae Ceausescu and Elena Ceausescu 874 01:22:23,560 --> 01:22:26,400 have been detained by groups of citizens and soldiers 875 01:22:26,640 --> 01:22:29,200 while trying to flee abroad. 876 01:22:47,760 --> 01:22:49,800 This one isn't working! 877 01:23:05,520 --> 01:23:07,720 This one must be tuned first, 878 01:23:07,920 --> 01:23:11,040 and then the sound will be beautiful and pure! 879 01:23:11,280 --> 01:23:13,440 We'll do it next time! 880 01:24:19,400 --> 01:24:21,960 Andronic! Last action... 881 01:24:28,160 --> 01:24:33,760 We had no winner, it was an equal result. 882 01:24:35,680 --> 01:24:39,200 Everybody lost and everybody gained. It was a win-win situation. 883 01:24:40,840 --> 01:24:43,520 That's the most important point. 884 01:24:44,440 --> 01:24:49,560 If yourself believe you are the winner, you shouldn't show it. 885 01:24:50,960 --> 01:24:55,240 It was first of all a humanitarian question. 886 01:24:55,840 --> 01:24:59,960 From our point of view. From yours and from ours. 887 01:25:01,920 --> 01:25:05,240 No, it was business. No, it was business! 888 01:25:06,320 --> 01:25:09,520 We didn't consider it business because it... 889 01:25:09,880 --> 01:25:12,400 ... it was a business... 890 01:25:13,120 --> 01:25:14,880 Lost? Lost! 891 01:25:15,280 --> 01:25:19,200 Loss of people, indeed, but gain of money. 892 01:25:19,880 --> 01:25:22,440 A gain of money, lots of it... 893 01:25:23,720 --> 01:25:29,920 I agree it was a great loss for Romania and a gain for Germany. 894 01:25:30,560 --> 01:25:34,680 But mostly it was a gain for liberty. 895 01:25:35,080 --> 01:25:36,880 That's right! And humanity. 896 01:25:37,080 --> 01:25:39,480 But the liberty cost you cannot evaluate. 897 01:25:40,160 --> 01:25:44,480 Yeah, we are thinking in the field of human rights... 898 01:25:53,160 --> 01:25:55,680 Why did it have to happen this way? 899 01:25:55,920 --> 01:25:59,080 Why did fate deal us this card? 900 01:25:59,360 --> 01:26:02,520 Why did we have to walk this hard road? 901 01:26:08,960 --> 01:26:11,800 The operation was profitable for the Federal Republic, 902 01:26:12,040 --> 01:26:13,920 not only for the people in question. 903 01:26:14,120 --> 01:26:16,560 I mean, we won back our fellow countrymen. 904 01:26:16,760 --> 01:26:19,440 Their knowledge, their expertise, 905 01:26:19,680 --> 01:26:24,920 their cultural input ! we won it all back, to ourselves, so to speak. 906 01:26:28,440 --> 01:26:32,720 I feel very good here. I particularly feel very good in Bavaria! 907 01:26:34,760 --> 01:26:38,040 I am happy with my life as it is! 908 01:26:41,240 --> 01:26:45,160 As Romans used to say: veni, vidi, and then we'll see what happens! 909 01:26:45,360 --> 01:26:48,600 And now we'll see what happens in Transylvania, right? 910 01:26:51,400 --> 01:26:54,680 I bow to Germany! All my respect! 911 01:26:54,920 --> 01:26:57,920 If someone else, other than Bucur, maybe a second Bucur, 912 01:26:58,120 --> 01:27:00,600 had asked for one more payment, rest assured that the Germans 913 01:27:01,040 --> 01:27:05,360 would have paid ! only to be able to take home their own people. 914 01:27:06,160 --> 01:27:10,560 The reunification of the nation: you'll never see Romanians do that! 915 01:27:12,440 --> 01:27:16,160 For all its brutal nature, it all went so smoothly! 916 01:27:16,400 --> 01:27:19,400 We were able to help over 300,000 people. 917 01:27:19,760 --> 01:27:21,440 What more could one wish for? 918 01:27:21,800 --> 01:27:25,040 One can only say: Thank You, dear God! 919 01:28:05,800 --> 01:28:09,560 Shall I hold this glass now? No. Just drink a bit. 920 01:28:13,840 --> 01:28:16,920 See how everything is ruined there! 921 01:28:19,720 --> 01:28:22,120 And how many children are there in this village? 922 01:28:23,240 --> 01:28:26,640 Lots! - How many? 20, 30, 50? 923 01:28:28,120 --> 01:28:31,880 ... and he says to my husband: Why did you marry a German? 924 01:28:32,680 --> 01:28:35,480 And how do you get along with the Germans? 925 01:28:37,200 --> 01:28:41,400 Shall I tell you something...? No. Just shut up. 75770

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