1. EachPod

Cwic Show- LDS Woman, "I Went to Prison for Smuggling People Across the Berlin Wall"

Author
Greg Matsen
Published
Mon 09 Mar 2020
Episode Link
https://sites.libsyn.com/128443/cwic-show-silvia-pollack-lds-woman-i-went-to-prison-for-smuggling-people-across-the-berlin-wall

At age 18, Sylvia Pollack began smuggling people from East Germany to West Germany. Things were going well, then she was setup by the East German security force, the Stasi. After 3 months in an East German jail without her family knowing what had happened to her, she had a mock trial and was sentenced to 5 years in an East German prison. Silvia grew up in both West Germany and East Germany with family on both sides of the wall. She was a member of the Young Pioneers, a mandatory, communist youth group not unlike the Hitler Youth of the Nazis. She lived in the different worlds of democracy and socialism and gives examples of life behind the iron curtain.

Share to: