My readjustment was aided greatly by a small group of octogenarian ladies who remembered my family well. Welcoming me as a long lost soul, they soon became my staunchest supporters in my quest to guide the School of Continuing Education out of an era of suspicion and uncertainty. During our frequent gatherings, I listened to their turbulent life stories that had spanned most of the 20th century, and eventually decided that these incredible tales of suffering and survival under five different political systems, among them the Third Reich and the long 40 years of Communist rule, should be recorded and preserved for future generations. Over the extended stretch of eight years I was able to gain the trust of over 75 eyewitnesses who consented to have their life stories published in this book. These are not pretty stories, but painful recollections of long years of isolation from the Western civilized world, of fear of denunciation and the knock on the door in the middle of the night, of deprivation of body and soul, of hopelessness and despair.
Many stories talk of high drama.
After initial distrust and fear, my storytellers would soon open up and let their pent-up memories permit the slow process of catharsis and healing. Recording these life stories and collecting them in this book has been a humbling experience. The result is a mosaic of family and company histories, memoirs, and reports long hidden, and a pictorial record of over 500 houses, monuments, and people of this small town the size of Charlottesville, Virginia. My book is meant to preserve some of the human history as it played itself out in the 20th century.