MY NEWLY ACQUIRED PERSPECTIVE of the Stasi horrors became a silent companion on my trip to Jena, the town where I spent my university years.
My college buddy Günter met me in Berlin and we made the trip together. Forty-five years gives Father Time plenty of opportunity to make his mark on people, and Günter was no exception. During our college years, he had been slight of frame with long arms, a thick head of black hair, and a mustache. Now his frame had almost doubled in size, and most of his hair was gone. But his bright, slightly mischievous eyes were a dead giveaway—this was still my good friend Günter.
The next two and a half hours in the car together were delightfully entertaining. Günter is one of the best storytellers I’ve ever met, so he mostly talked and I mostly roared with laughter. And because he still had the accent of his hometown, Jena, his tales took me back emotionally to the time of our youth.
Most of Günter’s stories had to do with his professional past. In the 1970s, the East German government had overestimated the demand for highly trained chemists. As a result, Günter had difficulty finding a job after college, as did many of his fellow doctoral students. Finally, he found employment as a scientist with the Stasi forgery department—which, with the exception of money, forged everything worth forging. Given that engineering is in the German DNA, it’s not surprising that Günter and his colleagues became world class at their devious craft. Because of his outstanding work, Günter wound up heading the entire department.
After the wall came down, the West Germans recognized the excellence of Günter’s operations, and while the Stasi itself was smashed to pieces, his department was fully integrated into a unified all-German intelligence service. To his consternation, Günter was forced into early retirement, and as an ex-Stasi member he saw his government pension cut in half. But thanks to his wife’s pension from her career as a teacher, the two still manage to live comfortably in a suburb of Berlin.
When we arrived in Jena, it was already dark. Günter and I checked into our hotel and proceeded to the restaurant where we would meet my son Günther; his mother, Edeltraud; and his stepfather, Bruno. Two years earlier, Günter had connected me to Edeltraud via e-mail, and my son had come to visit for two weeks at my house in New Jersey. Much like my experience with Matthias, that initial reunion started out feeling awkward and uncomfortable but ended with a genuine hope for a new beginning. Now I was here to meet him again and to reconnect with his mother some forty years after we had last seen each other.
It was an unusually warm October evening, and Günther, Edeltraud, and Bruno were sitting at an outside table waiting for us. As we approached the table, Günther suddenly became animated. He stood up, pointed at Günter, and asked his mother, “Who is that?”
When she responded, he became furious.
“Either he goes or I go!”
There was no reasoning with the young man. Apparently, Edeltraud had told him that Günter was ex-Stasi, and there was no way that my son would break bread with a hated former agent. Forced to choose between my friend and my son, there was really no choice to be made. I sat down with my son and his parents, and Günter had to leave the scene. We made plans to reconnect the next day to visit some other friends, and he walked off defeated and somewhat befuddled. But such was the hatred that most East Germans felt toward the Stasi even twenty-five years after the wall came down.
Even though we are now ideologically worlds apart, Günther and I were able to rekindle our friendship and are likely to continue to be friends as long we’re on this earth.
History has been kind to the dreamy little city of Jena, one of the few East German towns that truly thrived after reunification. Unlike Berlin, which has undergone a radical face-lift, Jena still presents itself to the world much as it did fifty years ago. Most of the buildings I remembered from when I lived there are still standing, but they’ve been spruced up and are a lot more attractive. I had no problem finding all the old haunts from my college days: the five-hundred-year-old headquarters of the university where Professor Siegmund Borek recruited me for the Communist Party, the Rosenkeller student club where I spent countless Saturday nights, the dormitory where I was first approached by the KGB, the auditorium where I listened to many chemistry lectures, the building with the lab where I set myself on fire, and the yard where I conducted the mustard gas experiment.
Even the restaurant Die Sonne, where I met my first KGB handler, was still in business, albeit freshly painted on the outside and completely redone inside.
That evening, I had dinner with four of my former basketball teammates. This was a raucous event that took me back to the days when we would celebrate a win or mourn a loss with full steins of excellent beer.
I spent some time with the journalists from Der Spiegel and time with some other friends. I was also afforded the opportunity to finally apologize to Edeltraud for the immature and cowardly way I had treated her during her pregnancy and after Günther was born. Amazingly, she forgave me.
I spent my final evening in Jena exclusively with my son Günther, and the next morning I said good-bye to Jena with a heavy heart.
After Jena, I made forays into Rietschen, Bad Muskau, and Spremberg, with a quick stop at Reichenbach that yielded an unexpected treasure—a certified copy of my birth certificate. Though I had no documentation to prove that I was indeed Albrecht Dittrich, I knew too much about the people who had lived in Reichenbach during my childhood to have been a fake.
Unfortunately, Opa Alwin’s high school was no longer in use. The magnificent building was boarded up, testimony to the decay that befell this part of Germany after the reunification. Similarly, the school building in Rietschen, the village where we lived during my first ten years, was also empty and boarded up.
The house in Bad Muskau, where I spent the second decade of my life, was still there, freshly renovated and painted, but quite recognizable. The front door with the mail slot that Rosi’s good-bye letter came through was still in its original state. But gone were the outhouse and the Russian writing on the north wall. A chat with an eighty-year-old resident who remembered my mother yielded some interesting information about the fate of other neighbors, but there was really not much to do or see, so I continued my trip northward.
During my last few days in Berlin, I reconnected with Matthias and his lovely wife, Désirée, and I continued to marvel at how Chelsea had single-handedly managed to bridge the gaps between our family members. However, the one relationship that seemed beyond repair was with Gerlinde. I wanted to try, but how could I even begin to explain, much less justify, my betrayal of her? Matthias and his wife asked me not to contact Gerlinde, to avoid reopening barely healed wounds of the past, and I knew I had to respect their request.
Before I left Berlin, there was one more surprise in store for me, one more opportunity to tie up a loose end.
I was sitting in Matthias’s apartment, going through some printed material that my classmate Jürgen had given me, when I noticed a list of addresses and phone numbers. I saw that Rosi was on the list and that she had a Berlin address.
“Should I give her a call?” I wondered out loud.
Matthias looked at me quizzically, but when I explained to him the role that Rosi had played in my life, he put on his most wicked grin and said, “Of course you must call her. This should be interesting!”
Without giving it any more thought, I dialed the number.
“Hallo?”
“Guess who this is. . . . Take a deep breath,” I said. “This is Albrecht.”
Fifteen seconds of silence were followed by a shriek. “Oh my! Are you serious? I have to sit down!”
Apparently, like many others, Rosi had believed the rumors that I had perished in a rocket accident in Kazakhstan. When I called her, it was as if I had come back from the dead. We agreed to meet over coffee the following afternoon.
When I arrived at the agreed-upon place, Rosi was already there, sitting on a worn park bench in front of Zion Church. There was no mistaking her identity; it was still Rosi. The beautiful features I had fallen in love with fifty-five years earlier still shone through, though like all of our faces, hers had weathered with time.
For me, the past fifty years had completely healed any wounds that were caused by the abrupt breakup of our relationship. I was driven more by my innate curiosity to know how her life had been.
Rosi, on the other hand, was quite emotional. Without any prompting, she volunteered, “You know I made a really bad mistake when I let you go. We were simply too young to appreciate what we had.”
As a tear slowly made its way down her cheek, I said, “That’s okay, no hard feelings. You know, they say that things happen for a reason.” Rosi’s confession felt like an apology that was neither requested nor needed, but it still felt good.
On my last day in Berlin, Matthias and I did something we should have done thirty years earlier: We went to a soccer game together. Befitting the situation, he was the one who took me, not the other way around.
On my way to the airport, I had one more Rip Van Winkle moment. Much like the mistakes I had made in Montreal and New York due to cultural ignorance, I now provided some inadvertent comic relief in the country I once called home.
Before returning the rental car, I had to fill the tank with gas. But when I pulled into the self-service gas station, I couldn’t find the slot for the credit card on the pump. So I went inside and asked the young woman behind the counter quite sincerely, “Can you tell me how this works?”
Given that I was asking in perfect native German, she looked at me as if expecting a hidden camera to pop out at any moment. Then, figuring she would just play along with the joke, she explained slowly, “First you remove the gas cap. Then you take the nozzle, stick it in the tank, and press the lever.”
When her explanation reminded me of the twist-top bottle cap episode in Montreal from way back when, I burst out laughing and explained my dilemma to her. I don’t know if she believed me, but I did learn that in Germany one always pays inside after pumping gas.
In spite of all the memories, and the good food and excellent beer that resulted in a seven-pound weight gain, Germany was not my home anymore. Albrecht had his taste of the past, and he was satisfied, but he was also quite happy to merge with Jack as a whole person who lives in the United States. Miraculously, this Humpty Dumpty was being put back together again.
On my return to the US, I landed at Newark Airport, which is one of the worst places in the country to fly in to. The dingy facility and horrendous service makes you feel as if you’ve just landed in a Third World country. But nevertheless it was home.
No matter what challenges we face in our nation, as long as the beacon of freedom still shines, that’s where my home will be. America has always stood for the freedom to pursue our dreams and our faith; the freedom to come and go; the freedom to think and to express our thoughts without fear; and, most important of all, the freedom to fail.
I pray that this mind-set will continue to prevail in the one great bastion of freedom on earth—the United States of America.
Two days after my return from this eventful trip, I got a call on my cell phone while I was at the office.
“Hello, Jack? My name is Draggan Mihailovich, producer at 60 Minutes.”
Fortunately, I was somewhat prepared for the call. Frau Koelbl had gotten in touch with Steve Kroft, whom she had met two years earlier at a seminar in the US. She told me that 60 Minutes might be interested in my story.
Mr. Mihailovich was very professional but also very insistent, “My assistant and I would like to come to your place and tell you a little bit about what we want to do here. How about this coming Saturday?”
I agreed and immediately called Shawna.
“Guess what—60 Minutes just called.”
“What? 60 Minutes? You’re delusional!” she responded.
“This is real. I don’t know what they have in mind, but they’re coming to our place for a visit.”
The fact that Mr. Mihailovich knew about me and my story was the final link in the series of improbabilities that would ultimately allow me to share my story with the world.
When the bell rang on Saturday, I opened the door, and as Mr. Mihailovich walked in, he waved a copy of Unbroken in the air as an introduction. He told me that he had discovered and interviewed Louis Zamperini, the hero of that book, and he had a hunch that he was onto another story worth pursuing. After a three-hour interview, Draggan seemed excited about featuring my story on his program.
To work with some of the world’s best journalists in the news and entertainment industry was an adventure in itself. But the most important aspect of this production was that it gave me an opportunity to take my two adult American children to Germany and show them where I grew up. In April 2015, I again invaded Germany—this time in the company of a CBS crew and Jessie and Chelsea.
In contrast to my previous visit, the weather in Germany was absolutely rotten, with cold rain and wind every day. There was even a crippling hurricane, an extremely rare occurrence in Germany. But the weather did nothing to dampen our fun and excitement. We traveled in style, but the company we were in was more fascinating than the Mercedes limousines.
It was great to show my kids all the places of my youth. To the amusement of our driver, the three of us constantly talked over one another and bickered about everything that could be bickered about—thus revealing a genetic predisposition toward argumentativeness. But unlike in the past, this time we didn’t take things too seriously. We laughed a lot, and when things got a little tense between two of us, the third one would jump in as a mediator.
The final exclamation point of our trip was a grand family reunion with Matthias and Günther. When Jessie had to fly home earlier than Chelsea and I, Günther came up from Jena to bid him good-bye. When we took Jessie to the airport, we were able to take the one and only picture that features all four of my adult children and me. Now that this family has been reunited, we will persist in our relationships regardless of the ocean that separates us physically.
The 60 Minutes story aired on May 10, 2015. Not surprisingly, the board of directors at my company became uncomfortable with the revelations of my past. As a result, I was laid off, effective May 18, 2015—one more significant life event that fell on my actual birthday. Losing my job wasn’t part of my plan, but I have become accustomed to “interference” from God, and I’ve stopped fighting fights that I’m certain to lose. I’ve learned that when God overrides my plans, it is typically in my best interest. And I am learning how to trust Him with everything in my life. My departure from a job I truly loved has turned out okay. It gave me time to write this book and spend much more time with my little girl, Trinity.
Today, I strongly believe that God opens the doors He wants us to go through, and He shuts those He wants us to avoid. The challenge is to find the doors that are clearly marked with an Enter sign and avoid the pain caused by butting our heads against the ones that are shut tight. The signs are there—and they always have been—but now I’m paying attention. I sense that God is not quite finished with me yet on this earth, and I’m looking forward to what He has in store.
On June 1, 2016, Chelsea’s twenty-ninth birthday, I was sitting on my front porch watching Trinity and her mother walk around the pond on our property. Trinity was stabbing her net into the water hoping to catch a fish. How many times have I told her that she has no chance of catching a fish this way? But she just does not give up.
My thoughts were wandering into the past, to the day when Chelsea was born, when suddenly a scream disrupted my reverie.
“Daddy, Daddy, I caught a fish!”
“Are you sure? It could be a piece of wood,” I yelled across the pond.
“No, Dad. It is a fish, come see,” she hollered back.
I slowly rose from my chair and walked closer to take a look at her catch.
Miracle of miracles, Trinity was proudly holding a ten-inch bass with both hands. I was flabbergasted.
“How did you do this?” I asked in disbelief.
“Magic, Daddy. I have magic.”
Magic, I think as I watch Trinity’s beaming smile. Yes, little one, you have magic. Only God could create something so beautiful, and I love you so much.
Thank you, God.