Defections FROM the West TO East Germany

There is so much talk about defections from East Germany to the West. For balance some stuff on defecting from the West to East Germany (other than the Jeffrey Carney case which has a separate thread).

HD-Doku! Hinter feindlichen Linien - Nato-Deserteure in der DDR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSYQhsEFHTg

Sorry its in German

Funny that you just brought this up today. I just read an article from People's World by a US defector to East Germany who still comments on German politics to this day. He defected to the DDR back when Stalin was still alive and is now commenting on Merkel and the refugee crisis. He is a man who has lived through many eras.

http://peoplesworld.org/compromise-and- ... rman-left/

http://peoplesworld.org/victor-grossman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Grossman

Victor Grossman is one of the guys who are given a closer look in the film linked in the first post. He speaks there plenty about himself there too.

For those who do not speak German

Victor Grossman (born Stephen Wechsler ) fled the U.S. Army in the 1950s in fear of punishment connected with his left-wing activities at Harvard and in Buffalo. He landed in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), studied journalism, founded a Paul Robeson Archive and became a freelance journalist and author. One book is in English: "Crossing the River. A Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany" (2003, University of Massachusetts Press).

Still more

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Grossman

Let me add that I just saw that Comrade Joseph already made a post about Grossman and his book.

He wrote

"Has anyone else read Crossing the River: A Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany by Victor Grossman? I read it a couple of years ago. It is quite a good book.

To be brief, it is about a Communist Party USA member who was in the US military and stationed in Europe after the war. He would eventually defect to the GDR to escape the McCarthyist repression of the 1950s. The book discusses, among other things, his many experiences living there.

In addition, the author is still alive and still lives in Germany. After the destruction of the GDR he finally got around to joining the Party there, which by then had been renamed "Party of Democracy and Socialism" (now called "The Left"). He also visited the USA a while back, and occasionally there is news from him printed in the Peoples Weekly World (the newspaper of CPUSA).

I recommend reading this book."

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