Erika Riemann’s Oral Testimony on Life in East Germany During the Cold War

After World War One, Germany was thrown into downward spiral. They were left with a monstrous amount of

In addition to the damaging consequences of the First World War with the requirements of the Treaty of Versailles, certain features of Germany caused the state to be susceptible to the influence of this dangerous ideology. Along with the damage to the national ego as a result of the First World War, Germany had co-existing and conflicting highly modern strands of development forced to integrate with powerful remnants of archaic values and social structures, and had a deeply fractured parliamentary political system, and the weaknesses of this system reflected the social and political differences within the population. This shame and failure after World War I was superimposed onto a modern country which once had an advanced economy, a sophisticated state

concentration camps! Marion Blumenthal Lazan was 7 when she first was forced to be put in a

Germany was able to rebuild thanks to American financial aid. People in Germany, as in other European beaten countries after the war, began to pin their hopes for happiness on the acquisition of cars, television sets and furniture. About the time of Bausch’s adolescence, comparing status symbols began to be a more powerful form of personal communication than simple human contact.

The first concentration camp was created in 1933, just a few weeks after Hitler became chancellor. A total of twenty-two were created, and all together included 1,200 affiliated camps. The camps were found all over Germany. At first political opponents of Nazi policy were taken, and later Jews, gypsies, or criminals. Each camp consisted of barracks which were surrounded by barbed wire, watchtowers, and guards. Imprisonment in the camp included inhuman force labor, hunger, disease, mistreatment, and random executions. Prisoners were forced to work twelve hours day, or even more. The sick, old or those who could not keep up were killed by either gas, or injections. Those who could endure

With essentially nothing to live for and no reason to go on, many of the prisoners gave up

“I pray you never stand at any crossroads in your own lives, but if you do, if the darkness seems so total, if you think there is no way out, remember, never ever give up. The darker the night, the brighter the dawn, and when it gets really, really dark, this is when one sees the true brilliance of the stars.” These words were spoken by Gerda Klein, a Holocaust survivor. Her story is filled with desperation and an overwhelming sense of hope. Gerda Weissmann was born in Bielsko, Poland. Both of her parents and her older brother died during the Holocaust. She was somehow able to survive “the ghetto, deportation, slave labor camps and a three month death march. She was rescued by an American soldier named Kurt Klein. She ended up marrying him and moving to the United States.

“Inge Auerbacher was born December 31, 1934, in Kippenheim, Germany. Her parents were Berthold and Regena Auerbacher” (Children During the Holocaust). “Her father was a textile merchant and was also a German soldier during WWI” (Inge Auerbacher). Her life was quite peaceful until one night, November 9, 1938, when every single window in her house was broken. Her Mother, Grandmother, and herself all had to hide in their backyard, but her Father and Grandfather got brought to Dachau Concentration Camp. Once they got released, Inge’s family then moved in with their grandparents. Sadly, in 1942, there would be no way to avoid

Prior to Nazi rule, life in Germany had been subject to many hardships. The German People had been victim of

In the month of March 1933, one of the first camps, Dachau, was opened. Dachau was a concentration camp, or a prison camp maintained by the Third Reich, [the name for Germany when the government was controlled by Adolf Hitler]. Aside these concentration camps was two other types of camps; labor camps, and death camps. A main concentration camp was Theresienstadt. Theresienstadt was located in what is now known as the Czech Republic. More than 150,000 were kept there for months until being sent to their deaths in Treblinka and Auschwitz death camps. The people in

Germany emerged from World War I with huge debts incurred to finance a costly war for almost five years. The treasury was empty, the currency was losing value, and Germany needed to pay its war debts and the huge reparations bill imposed on it by the Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended the war. The treaty also deprived Germany of territory, natural resources, and even ships, trains, and factory equipment. Germany’s population was undernourished and contained many widows, orphans, and disabled veterans living in poverty. The new German government struggled to deal with these crises, which had produced a serious hyperinflation.

In Germany the economy was especially vulnerable since it was built out of foreign capital, mostly loans from America and was very dependent on foreign trade. When those loans suddenly came due and when the world market for German exports dried up, the well-oiled German industrial machine quickly ground to a halt. As production levels fell, German workers were laid off. Along with this, banks failed throughout Germany. Savings accounts, the result of years of hard work, were instantly wiped out. Inflation soon followed making it hard for families to purchase expensive necessities with devalued money. Overnight, the middle class standard of living so many German families enjoyed was ruined by events outside of Germany, beyond their control. The Great Depression began and they were cast into poverty and deep misery and began looking for a solution, any solution. By mid-1930, amid the economic pressures of the Great Depression, the German democratic government was beginning to unravel. The crisis of the Great Depression

Germany had very low employment rates in this time and it made it even harder to get back to a stable economy. In this time a lot of people had no jobs so this also did not help Germany because companies were going out of business. This directly led to the decline of Germany's economy. When having no business’s running the country as no money coming in and can not send anything out.

About 8 million people were arrested, tried and sentenced to concentration camps or

In early September of 1945, Germany lay in total and utter ruins. In the years following World War Two, having been defeated, Germany was placed under allied occupation - divided into two main zones: West and East Germany. “West Germany was established on May 23, 1949, as one of two successor states—East Germany being the other.” ("Germany, West." Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia (2015): 1p. 1. Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia. Web. 6 Apr. 2016.) East Germany was ruled by the Soviet Union whilst West was under the rule of the Allied Powers. A chancellor by the name of Konrad Adenauer was put into power and it is said under his rule that Germany flourished. This research seeks to find out whether his role was important in the