Word: olaf
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...took the Breite family barely 24 hours to abandon everything they knew and bolt for a new life in the West. Though their discontent had been brewing for years, Olaf, 28, and Marlies, 26, had never seriously contemplated leaving their East German village of Schonermark, near Potsdam, until Sept. 11. That night, shortly after midnight, Hungary began permitting East German refugees to cross over en masse into Austria. The Breites watched West German television coverage of the Great Escape and realized that the Iron Curtain had parted, but that it could be drawn shut again at any moment. By lunchtime...
...avoid raising suspicions, Olaf, a roofer, returned to work after their midday decision. Marlies headed to the bank, where she withdrew nearly all their savings and converted just enough of it into Czech currency, she explains, "to allow us to pretend to border officials that we were going to Czechoslovakia for a short vacation." Because they were afraid to expose their plans even to friends and family, there was no one to bid them farewell at 9 that night, when they piled their children -- Christian, 5, Susann, 3, and Katrin, 9 months -- into their worn getaway car, a 1972 Fiat...
...Hungary required an East German exit permit they did not have. The Breites had to abandon the car and ford a river under cover of darkness. Sympathetic Czechs led them to a spot on the Ipoly, a shallow Danube tributary, where other East Germans were making the same trek. Olaf carried two children across; Marlies toted the third. On the Hungarian side, their luck held. Though it was 3:30 a.m., a bus happened by. "There were other refugees inside," Marlies recalls. "And we kept picking up people all along the route...
After a rail hop to Budapest and a $76 cab ride across the Austrian border, they reached Vienna, where they sent relatives a postcard explaining what they had done. From Vienna, the West German embassy sent them to a transit camp near Munster in the Federal Republic, where Olaf was quickly offered a roofing job in nearby Ochtrup. He finds the money much better than his old pay -- 18 West German marks ($9.50) an hour, vs. 5.4 East German marks ($2.85 at the official exchange rate). "The materials, equipment and technology are as different as night and day," says Olaf...
...Finn-Olaf Jones...