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Born in the West, longing to be back in the GDR
Mon Jul 6, 2009 8:22pm EDT
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By Paul Carrel
BERLIN (Reuters) - John Tarver had just come out of a regular meeting with his officer in Communist East Germany's Stasi secret service when the Berlin Wall came down. But the Briton had no desire to cross to the other side.
Neither did Ingeborg Rapoport, a German doctor who had moved from the United States to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) when McCarthyism swept through America.
They were among a handful of Western Communists who chose a life on the other side of the 'Iron Curtain' even though many East Germans dreamed of living in the West and hundreds died trying to escape.
Twenty years after the fall of the Wall, Rapoport, Tarver and others feel nostalgia -- tinged for some with regret -- for the GDR, arguing modern society can learn from East Germany.
"There was much more friendship then," recalled Rapoport, 96, over tea at her home in former East Berlin. "That's something precious I will never forget. I'm homesick for the GDR."
Most of those who emigrated were devoted Communists: some were following the trail of Kim Philby, a British spy who served as a double agent for the Soviet Union; others came for personal or family reasons or seeking refuge from McCarthyism.
Tarver was no Philby, but his commitment to the Communist cause had brought him into contact with the Stasi, which was how he came to be reporting to his officer in late 1989 in a safe house in East Berlin even as the Wall was cracking open.
"When I came out I went to the next pub, which I always did, and it had happened," the 79-year-old recalled. "People were saying 'yeah, we can go over now!'"
He didn't rush to join them because his British passport had allowed him to travel regularly to West Berlin since moving to East Germany in 1976. He had a job in education, like most of the British immigrants attracted to the country despite the one-party government's repressive policies.
The biggest number of Westerners arrived from Austria and Switzerland. Some were Communists, others had worked at institutions in Soviet-occupied Austria that were later closed. Many were scientists and medics whose expertise the GDR needed.
"SOMETHING PRECIOUS"
Rapoport, a pediatrician, was one of them. Born in 1912 in the former German colony of Cameroon, she grew up in Hamburg and studied medicine but emigrated to the United States in 1938 because the Nazis wouldn't let her complete her studies.
Her family has Jewish roots and the horrors of fascism turned her toward Communism.
"I was quite religious when I was younger but I saw that after 2,000 years injustice had not been done away with in society. So I looked for something else," said Rapoport, now a sprightly great-grandmother.
In the United States she met her husband, Samuel, also a European Jewish emigre and prominent physician -- and a fellow Communist. Soon they found themselves targets of the crackdown on Communist influence spearheaded by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Continued...
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