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Jutta Fleck will never forget the day when East German police separated her from her two young daughters because she had committed the crime of trying to flee for the West.
It was 1982 and she had been picked up by Romanian police while trying to escape to Yugoslavia over the Danube with her children, aged 11 and 9. They were handed over to the East Germans and flown back to East Berlin three days later. Police separated mother and children immediately.
This week, more than nine million television viewers in reunited Germany have been watching a two-part dramatisation of Fleck's fight for her daughters. The Woman at Checkpoint Charlie, starring Veronica Ferres, has been timed to coincide with today's 17th anniversary of reunification.
The re-enactment has prompted specialists on the former East Germany to join with rights activists, politicians and former Communist Party members for what many concede is a long-overdue reappraisal of communist rule and the West's response to it. "The millions of viewers suggest that, after 17 years of reunification, Germany's collective soul is ready for the mass media to deal with this subject," said Der Tagesspiegel.
Fleck's daughters, Claudia and Beate, were put in a state-run children's home. She spent three years in the notorious Hoheneck womens' prison. After being freed, Fleck spent almost three years campaigning ceaselessly for her daughters to be allowed to join her in the West and was finally reunited with them in 1988.
- Independent
