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Socialism is a philosophy of
failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is
the equal sharing of misery.
Winston Churchill
Today, socialism.
With the US Democrats openly embracing “Democrat socialism” and the GB Labour
Party firmly under the control of Comrade Corbyn and the New Communist Labour
Party model, Der Spiegel provides a timely reminder of the tyrannical socialism
that ran East Germany.
Comrade Corbyn and others
holidayed in the workers socialist paradise of the unjust state of East
Germany. How socialism really works. Splitting up families. Withdrawing
parenting rights.
Britain under the New
Communist Labour Party. America under Democrat Socialism.
The Little-Known Tragedy of Forced Adoptions in East Germany
The East German state had a habit of taking children from politically undesirable parents and giving them up for adoption. It is a horrific aspect of the communist regime that has never received the attention it deserves. That may now be changing.
By Annette
Großbongardt February 07, 2019
07:24 PM
When Uwe Mai thinks about his
childhood, he sees the Saale River. Bending gently, it flowed past his parents'
home in Calbe just south of Magdeburg. He only had to dash across the road and
down some steps to reach the riverbank, lined with big old trees to climb and
rocks to skip across the water.
Mai says that he and his
little brother Thomas played down by the river every day when his parents were
working their shifts. His father was a steelworker in a nearby factory that was
a major supplier of pig iron in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), as East
Germany was officially known. His mother worked as a bus conductor.
But then came the day in early
1961 when the GDR took his parents away. He and his brother were playing down
by the river as usual when they heard someone call: "Come home
quick!" Strange men were standing in the kitchen, he says, and his father
sitting on a chair, crying. "Mommy is gone," he said. "I can't
feed you here anymore, you will have to go to a home for the time being."
It was the first time that Uwe had seen his father cry. He was six years old at
the time, his little brother was three.
After that, things moved
quickly. A woman, likely from the youth welfare office, was also there, Mai
says, and she packed their things and brought them to a children's home in
nearby Schönebeck. Only Herbert, their big brother, was allowed to stay.
Where was his mother? What had
happened? In the children's home, he says, a woman who worked there later
whispered into his ear: "Your mother ran off to the West with a
colleague." He says it was the only bit of information he ever received,
and even today, he still doesn't know if it is true.
Uwe Mai, 64, lives in
Strausberg, a town just east of Berlin, in a building that during GDR times was
reserved for high-ranking military officers and civilians working with the
National People's Army. The structure was known as the "Sound
Barrier," Mai says, because the apartments inside were unattainable for
normal GDR citizens.
It's not like Mai's life has
been a failure. He is married and has a big family of five children and four
grandchildren. He was an army officer and went on to work for a construction supplies
manufacturer. He retired last year.
And yet, there is this big
void. He never again saw his mother, his father or his brothers. His memory of
his parents has faded so much that he no longer remembers what they looked
like. GDR officials found a new family for him, and Uwe Hampl became Uwe Mai.
There are a number of GDR
families whose lives were torn apart in a similar fashion, with children being
taken away from undesirable families for political reasons. The state, says
Berlin-based legal expert Marie-Luise Warnecke, a 39-year-old who has spent
years researching the issue, wanted to punish them "for unruly
behavior." At the same time, the move served to ensure the children's
socialist upbringing. Only couples who were loyal to the party line were considered
as adoptive parents.
In 1975, DER SPIEGEL reported
that in addition to normal adoptions undertaken in the GDR for the well-being
of the child, forced adoptions were also taking place there out of political
considerations. Often, these involved couples who had been caught trying to
escape and were then separated from their children as a consequence. After the
Berlin Wall came down, a number of cases became known, particularly after files
pertaining to forced adoptions carried out up until 1988 were found in the
basement of a district hall in Berlin. Some children were still at elementary
school age when they were taken from their parents.
But even today, 30 years after
the demise of the GDR, the practice has not been adequately processed. Marian
Wendt, a center-right member of federal parliament from the eastern German
state of Saxony, calls it "one of the last, significant unexplained
chapters of the unjust state of the GDR." Only in spring 2018 did the
Center for Contemporary History Potsdam complete an initial study on the issue,
with the researchers noting a "significant gap in research."
They estimated that there were
"at least several hundred" politically motivated forced adoptions,
but there are no reliable statistics. Now, a much broader study is planned to
learn the true dimensions of the practice. Warnecke, who has proven five such
cases and one failed attempt, says that cases that have thus far been confirmed
are likely just "the tip of the iceberg."
For the victims, it's about time.
They have been waiting for answers for too long -- and for recognition of their
suffering. Instead of the clarification they had hoped would come with the
collapse of the GDR, there are just a lot of questions and a lot of scars.
"Many of us became sick
and experienced extreme anguish," says Andreas Laake, 58. Originally from
Leipzig, he was stopped in 1984 by the GDR coast guard as he was trying to flee
to the West across the Baltic Sea in a rubber dinghy together with his pregnant
wife. Laake says he claimed full responsibility and was thrown in jail. When
his wife gave birth, he wasn't even allowed to see the child and a court simply
withdrew his parenting rights. His wife was presumably pressured into giving
the child up for adoption.
More. Much, much more.
The goal of socialism is
communism.
Vladimir Lenin
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished January.
DJIA: 24,999 +76 Down. NASDAQ:
7,282 +124 Down. SP500: 2,704 +71 Down.
Normally this would suggest more correction still to come, but with
President Trump wanting to be judged by the performance of the stock market and
the Fed’s Plunge Protection Team now officially part of President Trump’s
re-election team, probably the safest action here is fully paid up synthetic
double options on most of the major indexes.
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