Duisburg. But I was determined to speak to representatives of my
age group.

I decided to conduct interviews and placed notices in the local
newspaper asking volunteers to participate in a research project. From
the mayor down to the night clerk at the hotel, I received the utmost
support in my endeavor: newspaper contacts, interview rooms, tele-
phone, secretarial service, and publicity. To my surprise, before I ar-
rived, sixty-five people had already answered a single notice in the
local newspaper, declaring themselves willing to meet with me.

Then, through an unexpected series of events, I found myself in-
terviewing behind the iron curtain one and a half years later. Fortu-
itously, the existence of an informal East German association of
historians had come to my attention and I contacted them. They
agreed to help me conduct an investigation similar to the one in
Karlsruhe. This time my question was: In what respects do East Ger-
mans' experiences and attitudes during and after the Nazi era resem-
ble or differ from those of the West Germans I had interviewed?

Getting to East Germany was not so easy. A visa was required to
pass through the Berlin Wall into the German Democratic Republic
(GDR). Six weeks before my scheduled departure, I applied for one
by submitting a form and surrendering my passport to a special travel
agency in New York, which sent on my request to the GDR consulate
in Washington, DC. Two, three, four weeks passed. I received prom-
ises and reassurances but no visa; worse yet, now I did not even have
my passport in hand. Two days before the scheduled flight, the
agency assured me I would have my passport back the next day. In
fact, just a few hours before my departure, my husband picked up
my passport, complete with a visa--dated six weeks earlier, the day
following my application! Why? Paranoia? Chicanery? Bureaucratic
inefficiency? That's how things are.

The plane I boarded that June day landed at the West Berlin in-
ternational airport. Accustomed to marching through long airport
corridors and waiting on long passport and customs-control lines, I
was surprised by the fast pace in Berlin. In fact. I was sped through
so quickly that I was still disoriented when my eyes fell on a single
long-stemmed wine-red rose rising from someone's hand. Above the
flower, the smiling face of Heiner, a young historian, came into focus.
Never before had I received such a welcome. My escort had been
delegated by his group to shepherd me in his aged Trabi (an East
German car, smaller than the Volkswagen Beetle) through Check-

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