Margit Hosseini´s father

Before the Berlin wall

Well, when we visited our family who lived in the East, we could realized that everything was really different there and I believe they also knew it. Their government payed attention to every little detail, for example, I remember when they could not bring oranges from there because it was kind of western influence. It may sound ridiculous but it was like that. This is not the most strong reason why people came to the West but it shows that West Berlin was in better conditions and much more calm than the East. Moreover, most of them noticed about this tense situation and went across to the West.



During the Berlin wall

This was a very hard moment in my life. When I woke up and noticed that the border was closed, I remember my little daughter was in the East and I felt extremely bad. I did not know what to do, how to act. We went to Friedrichstrasse because people said that if we wanted to find her we had to go there. It was chaotic, everybody was doing the same, trying to find their family and the authorities were very strict, I thought I was not going to see my daughter again. After some discussions and finding the papers we needed, we got her back but it was not an easy task. Everybody was shocked and nervous due to this situation and it affected everyone, we were not sure of what was going on, especially on the 13th, when the whole wall was built. We were afraid because the Americans did not seemed to be worried about all this chaos and we realized that the Russian soldiers were much more concentrate than the western ones.
 Our lives changed completely. The gas, electricity and telephone service was different and until the Seventies, they did not work properly. We were not in our best days, we were suffering and the situation did not seemed to improve.

After the Berlin wall

When the wall was dismantled, on the 9th November, 1989, I felt relaxed again after many years. The reunifiaction of Germany was a new start in our lives. It was not only this action but also the end of the Cold War. We were now prepared to see our whole family and it was a mix of feelings, at least for me. As I said before, I was calm and relaxed but happy and comfortable in our country one more time. It was not West and East Germany anymore, it was an united nation again.