My Life In East Germany & The Struggle Today With Victor Grossman

this is Steve's out there with KPFA workweek radio and I'm with Victor Grossman welcome to Work Week Victor why don't you talk about your life and how you ended up in East Germany well I I was a red diaper baby I grew up in New York in the end at the end of the 1930s I was born in 1928 when it was a pretty left-wing time and a pretty left-wing area which I lived in and the people we knew and I quickly became a leftist and stayed that way in high school I went to several schools and then in college which is where I was recruited into the Communist Party and after college I responded to an appeal by the party and went into when it could work in a factory in actually two factories until I got drafted during the Korean or I was just too young to get drafted for the Second World War but I got caught up by the Korean War and I had luck that I was sent not to Korea but to West Germany but I had bad luck because when you were drafted in those days you had to sign a statement that you had never been in any left-wing organization and I had been in a dozen of the youth organizations and at the party but if I sign that I had been if I admitted that I had been there was a law called the McCarran act which said anybody in any of these organizations must report immediately to the police as a foreign agent otherwise he can be he can be punished up to ten thousand dollars and five years in jail per day that he doesn't report it means after a week it's 35 years and is already six months gone by in any case I was scared when I was drafted and therefore I signed this statements that I hadn't been lying in other words and hoping that nobody would catch up and catch up on me and for a long time it worked but then they did catch up on me somebody denounced me that may have been the reason while I was in West Germany I get this report from the Pentagon saying you are in one two three four five six reports the middle judge next Monday and for having lied there was a somewhat similar penalty not per day but a one-time penalty up to five years and that's why I decided not that I wanted to take defect I were kind of forced into it I was panicked I did not want to spend any time in a military prison and therefore I I figured out the safest way to get across which was a probability unsafest and I went to Austria and swam across the Danube River from the American of a Soviet zone and they sent me to East Germany and you got to East Germany what was it like here at that time that was in 1952 already I was 24 and it was only seven seven or eight years after the war things were pretty tight here but not as I was possibly ready to expect I didn't see any hunger or people going hungry or ragged but the stores were not well stocked it was pretty tight but there was enough to eat for people I worked for a while in a factory then I learned to be a lathe operator and then I was able to go to college again starting all over again four more years where did you go to college I'm the only person in the world who has a diploma from both Harvard University and the Karl Marx University of Leipzig and I'm gonna remain that because it's no longer called that so I'm gonna change the name that's right so I'll have that time alone in any case life was not easy and especially in that first year and especially for me in a room which had a special oven you had to heat up which I never really learned to do properly and and no running water and not even flush toilets but gradually over the years my life improved as did the life of most people and then when I went to Leipzig already I moved upwards and that's what when I when with my future wife whom I met in the first year luckily that's what saved me from homesickness basically that I luckily found her within a few months and she went with me to Leipzig but she's got a job there we got married then and as a sublet he had subletting and then after four years at college I moved to East Berlin at first also I didn't have an apartment but then after a year I got an apartment and she came from Leipzig with our son then a little son and after two more years we got this present apartment and I've been in it 1961 I've been in it ever since I'm in this it was newly built then it was with central heating with all the sanitary it was a modern apartment and well we were quite happy here so the East Germany has always been portrayed in the United States and the Capitals is a terrible place people did not want to be there people wanted to escape it wasn't a place that really people wanted to be but they were forced to be there yeah it's a mixed story because of course a lot of people were not happy there are a lot of people who saw who dreamed of the glorious West because in television which we got every evening from the West yeah if you if you wanted most people did we saw this wonderful life in the West I don't know how many people remember this this series called Dallas about these oil barons in Texan and that wonderful lives an awful lot of people in East Germany the GDR as we call it thought that's how people live in the United States and they wanted to live that way too and since the East Germany was disadvantaged from the start first world was much smaller than West Germany second one it had none of the natural resources which what Germany did it were had almost no natural resources except a very low grade quality coal which was ecologically terrible and not only that but most of the experts the in management and research and of an industry in general in 1945 when they saw the Russians coming and there and the German Reds coming back they took off for the West and got jobs with the same big oil companies in West Germany who was which were thrown out of East Germany which meant that they had to stop here in many ways from below zero in a very very difficult condition not only that West Germany got marshal plan help from the United States millions and millions were the East Germany paid almost the entire reparations war reparations ninety five percent to Russia or the Soviets and to Poland so that in many ways who was behind therefore it could never catch up with consumer good level in West Germany but it did manage to first of all there was always enough for people to eat basically all they wanted to put on as many clothes as they wanted to well you have so many advantages you had all medical care was covered all education was free I and my two sons went to college for nothing and got that 200 marks a month which covered basic expenses as I say medical care included my that having both babies and another long maternity leave that my wife had before and after and those things you don't have in the United States right now no I know that still a fight it's still a fight yes they're millions people without health care in the u.s. note there the at the beginning it wasn't quite so much for my first son but with my second son already women had six months leave paid and six months unpaid but their job was guaranteed and if they had more than two children it was more plus much more vacation basically through three weeks or more for almost everybody and not only that but free childcare it was it costs nothing you could leave your child as of one year old if you wanted up to kindergarten age and then he went just till went to school this was also free women were paid equal wages they got interestingly enough women and later men too if they had their own household got one day off free a month paid called a household day and vacations was so cheap some of summer vacations for children were basically free it was a short small expense but it could never catch up with West German commodity level in other words the most modern the Styles the fashionable spells and many and certain foods especially those imported from tropical areas there were never bananas there were rarely oranges there was not the variety that that they would have in West Germany and people saw this with big envious eyes also commerce they had they made cars here but they were little two-stroke cars called Trabant I had four of them there it was okay for me but people including my wife were not so happy with it it was it was good because you didn't have to put oil in it the oil was in the in the gas already and you didn't have to put you didn't have to put water in it because was there cooled and it you went so far in a gallon but you couldn't you couldn't go too fast at about 65 7 it was the limit in fact there was a jokes and how much faster can a Trabant go over to over 70 and the answer was it depends on how high you drop it from there were always jokes about it at the same time people were jealous and not only that because there were all kinds of attempts to destroy the East German in the GDR from West Germany they never forgave the big companies like Siemens Bayer the deutsche bank the big auto companies they never forgave the GDR for throwing them out completely and taking over what they had their deliver and they always wanted to smash left to take it back and so they were constantly working to undermine the country because of that there was a in opposing that there was repression because people were frightened the government was frightened of just that happening that they were being taken over which is what happened in the end and therefore many people were unhappy because there was a very widespread net of what in the United States would be called FBI but in the East Germany was called Stasi and they were spying on neighbors meaning that to this many people worried and angry with me a little bit less so because I had known that I was in being spied on when I was in the United States I'll never forget I was in a sublet room I lifted the phone the person on the other and thought it was the landlord and said this is the FBI and they said that it was my voice and quickly stopped obviously they were following me and later Freedom of Information Act they got I got 1,100 pages about me so that my my answer about Stasi is they all do it every country and during the witch hunts the FBI was going after people spying on people I mean the thousands of people and in fact earlier - and since there was an FBI basically an j edgar Hoover the head of it they were always spying and the Palmer Raids of course and that's not often away well in a certain way in any case however it did mean that many people were not happy here they wanted to go to the west where they thought they'd have a good life a better life and and many of them did some of them didn't but but many of them did and not only that but people especially young people took for granted there's things like free education complete medical care West Germany was much better than the United States in that sense - so wasn't such a big difference they had to they had to because they were there was a certain rivalry we're competing with what was raised oh they had to have a and not only in many ways they had to keep up but they were never as good as the GDR in terms of of conditions at work for safety and the fact that there was a saying and this perhaps sums up the spirit a little they were saying after the end of the of East Germany in factories it was sometimes said you know in the old days when it was still East Germany if you were smart you didn't say anything against the party leadership that was Honaker or the other big shots up on top if you were smart you didn't at least not among your friends and so forth but otherwise you wouldn't but you could say anything you wanted about the foreman of the manager because they couldn't fire you which is true people are never fired they had their now they said things have changed it's the other way around you could say anything you want above the politicians on top but you better not say anything up against the form under the manager or you'll lose your job this is an interesting balance which is which is more important and which is worse now the Berlin Wall this is a 30th anniversary of the of its end did you think that this was going to happen in the last year is that in the middle of the 80s 1980s you could see that things were going downhill here you could see economically up until then from the time I arrived in the 1950s until the middle of the 80s living standards went up and up and up for most people not evenly some groups more than quickly than others but they were going up in general for everybody this meant that almost every year on holidays the newspapers were full three four pages full of which prices are going down because they were naturally the prices were a national basis but middle of the eighties things tougher partly because they were the East Germany felt it necessary to keep as well armed as possible West Germany was very very modern the most modern armaments it forced her me to arm itself to death was the German secular warm it could not keep up with the electronics development which was so important in those years because the Soviets could not help they were busy with their own and West Germany was not allowed or Western Europe or the West in general did not supply East German with anything it meant that this little country had to try to catch up with IBM and Sony and it couldn't but it costs billions and the third thing was there was a giant housing development program to give everybody in the country a modern apartment by 1990 and that cost billions and those three perhaps broke the back economically one of the things in in Russia the Soviet units that time was a the fear of communication copy machines had to be registered and people could not copy stuff it was was their efforts to prevent people from communicating through these tech new technologies which at that time was new copy machines yeah it was not it was not easy to get to a copy machine they didn't have these modern that what was Xerox in those days that was just beginning and at that time but no the the the government had it was really afraid of any organized movement against it any group that was organizing against it and they were there were many groups organizing against it they found various ways of getting past it but the government kept on trying to stop that to save itself to save the country in the end it didn't succeed of course if you prevent communication development technology communication technology or harming the development of your economy yes as far as the introduction of new technology well of course the social media were just beginning at that time 30 years ago they did even technically they weren't up to it the fax was just even fax was hardly known there was just beginning so that it was not quite that the difference that it would make today but it's true and and the media were early controls so that you didn't on the one hand the media stuck to the official line and the other hand what people in the West do not realize is it's not that people were going around scared all the time people didn't give a damn they they didn't like the newspaper because it was just the same old stuff they read the headlines the local news the sports news and the obituaries and the rest they didn't bother with and the same basically with television they saw what they liked they didn't they turned off what they didn't like or they turned to Western TV and chose between them people were not worried about this they talked very freely among themselves in fact on every level except at a meeting or a school class you you tended not to attack the government policies well if you were you in the Communist Party at that time no it was the equivalent they called the socialist unity but no I never did join it and do you know if there was any debate or what was going on in the party yes in the party because many many of my friends were in it it was not that I was not involved it's just that I was not a member I didn't go to the membership meetings but yes this is where the discussions were often quite interesting this depended on the group in other words at universities is a much more discussion than in some local neighborhood but at these meetings people's ideas and and also the criticism criticism was spoken more than anyplace else and this one went up to the top so that they sort of in this way kept an idea of what people are saying and thinking about to a great degree even though it was not reflected in the press and how they how they should have done it differently is a difficult question because every time that a newspaper had anything which was even a little bit critical it was immediately picked up in the Western TV magnified often distorted and broadcast back into the into East Germany for the people so that the tenancy was have nothing critical because it can be used against us and this was a because most people in East Germany are an awful lot of people had relatives in the West brothers sisters cousins aunts etc so there was a constant communication and since West German was constantly trying to undermine East Germany there was a real you would say paranoia except that with paranoia its imagined often it was not imagined there was really a threat which in the end one out so that but they just never quite found the proper way to answer it to there was there was some good attempts we had wonderful theater we had wonderful films we had wonderful books we had wonderful clubs of all kinds but when I get to criticism criticism that's why you kept it in private circles or among your friends there you talk too openly but not publicly now okay so the the Gorbachev and the you know leaders of the Communist Party in Russia believed that if they transformed the country it would be more like Sweden or Denmark a social democracy was that the same idea here what did people in East Germany think about what was going on in Russia the Soviet Union in those years that was in the middle a little past the middle of the 1980s when things were going downhill here and so many people were very enthusiastic about the truth but many were not including me I was enthusiastic at the beginning because he really spoke up for peace which was the most important issue for us at the time and still is today as in my view but he was talking big about no programs economically but not achieving much as I saw on a vacation in in in Sochi if there were lots of hurrah for this new new ideas but the stores were empty in the GDR that was not the case we always had enough we always had more than enough to eat and to clothe and everything if not as I say if not always that the most modern and fashionable stuff that you had to run to get that and it was a it was a constant running to try and find a store with it you could still get some new fashionable item because they did because people had money the majority of people had money because production could never keep up with this demand people earned well I'm not saying everybody but a large number owned well and rents were about 1/10 of your income and and carfare in the city coffee or transfer was almost free and since college and medicine was all free it meant that people had money to buy things with disposable income was growing yes exactly but they could never catch up with demand on it and this was a constant problem and some then or two Gorbachev's ideas of glasnost which men transparency of having free press of course people liked that idea but some people saw that what it meant in in the Gorbachev was that the people who really hated the Soviet you moved there took over there repressed to a great degree and caused its downfall and that people who who did not want to see that East Germany go down they were they were skeptical about it now after the collapse of Russia the the people that own departments were provided those Department apartments they didn't take them away what happened to property in East Germany for the people here and in East German leather the first thing that happened was that the entire industry was destroyed it's over 90 percent this means that all the factories almost all of them were closed down who closed them down this included the factories which they were talking about in the West which were old-fashioned and broken-down decrepit but also very modern new factories who important steel mills and our big factories that was all closed down it was closed down by agreement with the West German government they said in the sukkah this trustee board which took over every publicly owned industry in the country and they sold it often for a song of hiddens yes to people they call in German app for an apple and an egg almost nothing the people who took to any good machine e machinery out sold that and let the rest of the thing go to go to hell and so you saw ruined buildings all over the country not only that they threw out a huge proportion of people and teaching college the professors journalism administration the courts support in every field they threw people almost either threw them out or downgraded them under the rule of somebody coming in from the West who got a privileged bonus for coming here and this meant a terrible time in those first years which is still going on we're still well behind and the right wing the fascist movement used that feeling that East Germans have been taken advantage of very definitely is the main feature of East Germany or as I call it the GDR German Democratic Republic which made me appreciate it was it was anti-nazi from the start that was the whole basis which was different from West Germany where the Nazis except for the very top level they basically took over that people don't know that but then they came to the United States some of them came to there like the famous went brown but they took over in every field in the GDR they were almost all of them thrown out of any position including from schools teachers judges police they were all thrown out and I like that but of course you couldn't change everybody's mind in two generations and the ones who had been still with fascist and racist ideas they kept their mouth shut I found that very good but after the change they suddenly came out of the woodwork and not only that but a lot of people came over from West Germany who took advantage of the fact that you had hundreds of thousands of young people who had up until then in GDR days had a future secure they knew that they went to a trade school or college but most people wanted crates to learn the trade and were guaranteed a job at the same wage of the older people this was no longer so you had thousands of young people who had nothing to do had no hope had no orientation because everything they'd learned this until then was suddenly consider wrong and the Nazis came in from West Germany or out of the woodwork in the east and they took advantage of these young people who had no place to go and who were sad and sour and angry and disappointed not only young people but especially young people and they have now become a very very great menace which reminds some people like me more and more of the years before just before Hitler took over and we have a few people here who are speaking in the same way the hit record and migrants and immigrants what is the situation is that been used in this Germany to blame them for the crisis the economic problems and other crises it's very much like I think like this situation in parts of the United States where the immigrants of the people from from Mexico or Central America are blamed for problems of joblessness the same here the the people who had no jobs or who had it rough and it many didn't have it rough because a lot of that protection of workers rights in the factories was gone they work more hours they had to come in weekends whether they wanted to or not it was speed up and this was the capitalist agenda him and most of all there was an increase of these temporary jobs these on page 2 have a low paid jobs the ones where you don't have a contract well you try to get along somehow and people in these situations with no job or with bad jobs or with insecure futures or who maybe or okay but didn't know what what happened with their kids they were told by the fascist but also by the media it was hinted by the media it wasn't said it's the fault of these all these refugees and immigrants from from Africa or from Near East yet they're getting all the privileges and all the money that should be going to you and this was done so cleverly that a lot of people believed it and those are the ones who vote for this fascist party which has become so strong in East Germany especially strong in fact in West Germany well in nationally it's about 13 14 percent now but in East Germany up to 25 percent vote for this fascist party it's really frightening and the other left party major that party to link what what is that the linka party that means the left which partly the leftovers from the old Communist Party here most people left after the end of the GDR because they had hoped in that party to have perks and that privileges this was gone it was only people who really believed in an ideal of socialism who stayed in it but some did and the votes went up to 16 percent 20 percent sometimes sometimes even more who kept to these ideas or remain in the party then in 2007 they were joined by a westrom and left-wing party who were dissatisfied because they the Social Democratic parties it's called there it's a it's sort of something like the Democrats in the United States in general they were dissatisfied that they weren't militant enough weren't fighting enough and and also trade unionists who are not found that the unions weren't mill enough they joined together it became an east-west party the link we takes I find by the way I'm a member of that I find takes very very good positions and almost everything especially it's the only party which is really against war and against building up a huge military and looking for peace but it's also for the rights of working people however it has not been able to especially in East to capture enough of the people's ideas to to stay in to get very strong so that it's now on a national level it gets about 910 percent of the vote in the East well in one state did one out it had 23 percent just recently but it's it needs to have a militant position and in Berlin now it's taken a militant position to stop all rent increases for five years because Berlin is hit hard by rents going up and up and up and up justification forced out by so-called modernization and there's no place for them to go and this new law which is just being processed right now should start in February would stop rent increases and this is is supported by three parties by the Greens which are not so left us in the eyes they support the invasion of the attack on Serbia and are not like the Greens in the United States there are not really a left-wing party there are very strong on environment but but they very and in in in Berlin they and also the Social Democrats have gone along with the left and saying it's impossible to look any further with people being forced out of all their homes especially in the whole central and been fortunately outskirts if they can find anything and therefore they have a coalition or three together in Berlin what will happen is that we'll have to wait and see now the issue of temporary workers the gig economy how capitalism is exploiting workers so that they don't have any regular jobs I hear if you have a temporary job you're not even necessarily going to get pension you're not in the pension system is that who is that is that a real problem in German engines are a big problem and an awful lot of people have no real hope for enough pension money to get along because most pensions are on state basis there's not so much of this from your place of work some people got that but it's mostly on the basis of you pay all all your working life you pay into the pension fund but for people who never who didn't now for 30 years didn't have good jobs their pensions are not gonna be very good like you must have a lot of angry people then if you're if you're your real income is declining and now the governing party sets the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats are trying to say we're improving that they're making small improvements but they're not big improvements and this question is still very hot and very worrisome because you have an awful lot of elderly people who have a very very hard time getting along and the developments in the United States this upcoming election may be debate between socialism and capitalism a majority of young people in the United States look to Social is on the solution for their crisis a lack of they're they're gathered missed we're going to college or lack of getting jobs what do you think that political developments in the United States if it moves to the less would be in Germany what will it be in Germany what would the political impact be of a movement in the left in the United States well if if Bernie Sanders should win the election which is I don't know what the odds are they're not so long shot yeah it's a long shot this would change the whole picture of the United States completely in the world today otherwise with Trump Trump is not popular here but I think a lot of people are confused about the role of the Democratic Party because some people say it's pretty much the same as the Republicans others say that it isn't they're not so clear on that I think that Germany is split in some ways including in government whether to go along with the United States internationally which means in terms of military pushing ahead surrounding Russia having troops in Ukraine supporting Nazis in the Ukraine this is exactly the question is should we go along with the United States and trying to isolate Russia surrounded with Ukraine Georgia Poland Estonia maneuvers or instead should we try to follow a policy of getting along not agreeing with Russia on everything but creating and being diplomatic and walk talking with them and working with them the government is split because you have some people or some companies who profit from selling say cars to Russia others profit from making armaments what was the effect of Trump telling the Germans as they should not buy gas from Russia well that didn't go over with anybody it didn't go over with Merkel on the top either there they don't nobody likes the idea of having the United States come in and tell them what to do some are willing to accept the United States telling them make sure to increase their armaments some people like that some people in the government like it including the new head of the European Union who comes from Germany she liked the idea of building military merit air and military building up armies especially aggressive ones with drones and with all kinds other people say no that's not going to help us economically and it's a danger of war which would be trying to get together with them and with the Russians and in general to tone down atomic weapons especially and groans and to work against this and most Germans the majority of the German people also would prefer a peaceful policy in the government level as I say they're split but it's only this Left Party which really has a consistent policy of not finding enemies to the east but trying to get along in the world had to cut back on armaments and this interim pillars growing interim pills rivalry between the United States Europe China the this is threatening trade wars it's threatening growing potential real war a global war are you concerned about a world war very much so of course the question for Germany is should it become the junior partner for those people in the United States I won't name them and in Colombia whatever have thought it and in Iraq and in Sudan but also unfortunately in Bolivia and our United States was involved in that I mean it said it's a difficult fight and the question is not to look at this as a fight between America and other countries because within the United States the same people who want to have made trouble in the world to get stronger and stronger to build up Americans military strength are also hurting the people in the United States that money should be going to good things schools roads hospitals etc and health care and not to billions and billions and billions and billions going to armaments the militarization I mean the amount of money that the United States spends military-industrial complex this is a history of the United States but also this idea of American exceptionalism that America is bringing democracy around the world yes unfortunately and I've done some work on this in fact it's in my book which I've written book it's called a socialist defector from Harvard to call marks la if anybody's interested I tried to show first of all how in the United States these fights have been going on that the real genuine United States and I consider myself a patriot an American patriot but I look to that to the real good America the people people like John Brown or Harriet Tubman and and the fighters in the ninth cerise cio building and the and the ones like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and all the others who fighting for good things in and I said that's the true America and we people like me also in Europe are hoping that these forces these people are the ones who become stronger and not the ones who say we the United States has to control the world that's bad for the world and it's bad for the United States and it's dangerous because they all have atomic weapons now it could be just some mistake and the dancing goes blows off and then all the worries about ecology or about be unnecessary because the whole damn world would be going up in flames in atomic disaster and some people in your in Germany you see that and do not want to be a junior partner for people like said Pompeii or Bolton and some people do we have the same problem here as in the United States or today in England or in so many countries there's the same kind of problem and you can only hope that that so-called little people they're not little but the so-called little people the people who do the work managed to break through against these people who are sticking beans and billions and billions into their Islands Cayman Islands or other swathes or into their one big yacht after the other one big skyscraper or a mansion after the other that's where all that money is going to and instead of going to the people who are needed and who turn to things like opioids to save themselves it's a pretty sad business we see opioids haven't hit here yet but they're good and they make it profit from murdering people exactly they were dying because of their need for profits this family they're attracting billion from Circular substance which has caused hundreds of thousands to suffer and die that's capitalism well we got rid of it and in 1945 not we I wasn't here yet I didn't get till 52 but they got rid of it in 45 in East Germany and tried to do something with it and succeeded basically in getting rid of poverty but they could not catch up with the West it's something like I say in the World Series the the Washington team worn out was it because it was more moral or better it was stronger in this case the capitalist group was called the West was stronger than the East the East made a lot of blunders in effort it was something new relatively new in the world they made a lot of blunders they did a lot of bad things to a lot of hard things which shakes people but basically the goal was to have a country where nobody is in need no one's in poverty everybody has that t fix that their health taking care of even if it's heart or cancer they could go to college if they're up to it all these things this is something we were trying to get and achieve to a degree but in the end were beaten by there but forces a big money

Channel: laborvideo

Views: 128,744

Keywords: East Berlin, privatization, facism, Nazis, immigrants

Id: Oy8CrizjKh4

Length: 43min 25sec (2605 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 28 2019