Land Of Opportunity

Escaping Communism to seek freedom and a new life in Canada

- Ruth Hotzwik

On Good Friday in 1959 my fiancé Helmut and I left our village in East Germany on the bus going to Leipzig, hoping to escape to West Germany via West Berlin. Since it was Easter weekend, we would not be missed at work until Tuesday. We were 24 and 26 years old at the time and Helmut resented the lack of personal freedom in communist East Germany.

From Leipzig, we travelled by train to East Berlin. There we took the subway, which at that time still served the whole city, and got off at the Berlin- Marienfelde station in West Berlin, where one of the refugee camps was situated. Here, thousands of refugees from East Berlin were screened for their acceptability to West Germany.

Our screening process took 12 days, after which we were flown to Frankfurt, West Germany. At the next refugee camp in Worms, a city in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, we were assisted in finding employment. We found work, two rooms to live in and got married that fall. The following spring, Helmut became restless once again. He resented being a refugee in his own country and began thinking of emigrating. Where to? Canada. Why? It looked and sounded as if there were lots of space to live, opportunities to work, and many other immigrants to feel equal with.

ON THEIR WAY