The Escape That Changed Everything

A true story of trauma, faith, and the deeper meaning of freedom.

A Childhood in Captivity

Before I could understand freedom, I had to understand what my father went through to get it. His story, long buried, finally came to light.

My Dad was born in 1937 in Germany, at the beginning of World War II. He grew up in what used to be Eastern Germany after World War II, when Germany was divided in 1949 and the eastern portion became part of the Soviet Eastern Bloc.

Officially, it was called the “German Democratic Republic” (GDR), a name that was deceptive because it was anything but democratic.

Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948, and the GDR began functioning as a communist-socialist/Marxist state in 1949.

It was essentially a dictatorship governed by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which made the teachings of Marxism-Leninism compulsory in schools.

The economy was centrally planned and increasingly state-owned. Prices of housing, basic goods, grocery stores, and services were heavily subsidized and set by central government planners. Many things were “free” or very cheap (supplied by the State), but they came at a heavy price in other ways.

In 1961, the socialist government fortified its western borders and built the Berlin Wall. People living in Eastern Germany were not allowed to travel to any Western countries, let alone consume Western goods or media.

Many people attempting to flee to the West between 1961 and 1990 were killed by border guards, booby traps, and landmines. Those who were captured spent a large amount of time imprisoned for attempting to escape.

Emotional Distance and Hidden Trauma

Throughout my childhood growing up in Munich (Western Germany), my Dad had difficulty relating to me emotionally. He always seemed aloof, checked out, and not very present. His lack of emotional intelligence lasted for decades, well into my adulthood. Back then, I resented him for not being there in the way I needed him to be as a dad.

He suffered from massive migraines and would never talk about his past. As I grew older, I understood that he was dealing with severe trauma from growing up as a child in the middle of WWII and then living under socialist rule in East Germany, where he eventually escaped from in 1965.

He never shared the details of his escape, mostly because he didn’t remember. He had blocked it out due to the trauma he experienced.

When my mom and I tried to talk to him about it, he got agitated and even nauseous. He kept a folder from his brother that contained letters and documents from his past, but he could never read them or even look at them. For 55 years, they stayed locked away.

Remembering and Writing to Heal

Five years ago, at the age of 83—and with much compassionate support from my mom and myself—he was finally able to confront his past and look at all the documents and letters.

It opened up an incredible healing journey for him, which led him to write a little book called “Das Ereignis, das mein Leben veränderte” (“The Event That Changed My Life”). He printed a few copies of the book for family and close friends only. In this book, he described the details of his and his parents’ escape from Eastern Germany.

All the memories he had blocked out came flooding back during the writing process. It was the most liberating and healing work he had ever done. He felt like a huge weight had been lifted off his entire being. He said he felt alive, energized, and happy. I’ve never seen him so emotionally open, relieved, and grounded.

The Escape Attempt

My Dad’s brother had already escaped to the West in 1961, at the age of 17, just before the Berlin Wall was built. He later immigrated to the USA and started a new life in Los Angeles.

My Dad and his parents didn’t realize what was coming (as did most people in East Germany) and stayed behind. His brother wrote letters, trying to find a way for them to escape. My Dad’s biggest dream was to come to the US—“the land of the free”—and attend UCLA.

In 1964, my Dad and his parents got very lucky. They were given cruise tickets on the Völkerfreundschaft, an East German state-owned cruise ship [see picture above] traveling through the Mediterranean Sea for sightseeing. The ship never docked in any Western countries.

This cruise was typical socialist-communist propaganda, meant to showcase the illusion that East Germans had a “good life.” The ship’s name translates to “People’s Friendship.”

Realizing this was a rare opportunity, my Dad and his parents meticulously prepared for escape. On October 26, 1964, my Dad (age 27) and his parents (in their 50s) jumped off the ship as it passed near Palermo, Italy, and swam toward a nearby Italian fishing boat.

The boat saw them and began steering toward them, but then suddenly stopped and turned away. Looking back, they saw another boat approaching—guards from the cruise ship chasing them down.

Imprisonment and a Miraculous Rescue

They were caught and put into solitary confinement back on the ship. A nurse who attended to my Dad managed to smuggle him a pen and paper so he could write a letter to his brother, which she then sent to the US.

They were taken off the ship and placed in a prison in Romania, and later flown to Moscow before being returned to East Germany. The entire time, they were under the custody of the Stasi and KGB agents.

My Dad and my grandfather were each sentenced to two years in prison; my grandmother got one and a half. They were placed in separate prisons in different cities and forbidden from communicating with one another.

My Dad still doesn’t remember everything that happened during his time in prison. One can only imagine how traumatic it must have been for him to block those memories to survive.

To keep this brief: his brother in LA, only 25 years old at the time, made tremendous efforts to help, contacting the American embassy, the US State Department, and the West German government.

Through miraculous and divinely guided synchronicities, a well-known lawyer was able to strike a deal with East German officials and “buy” their freedom.

In August 1965, they were picked up by a bus and driven to a refugee camp in West Germany after ten months in prison. Free at last.

A New Life in the West

A year later, my Dad met my mom, who had escaped communist Poland with her family. After some years in Germany, my Dad realized his dream. He and my mom moved to the US. He enrolled at UCLA, earned his Ph.D., and in 1972, I was born.

Looking back over all the facts, documents, and memories, my Dad realized that none of this would have been possible without the help of certain individuals in the US government, working in collaboration with German officials in Berlin.

There are indeed good people in government.

Romanticizing Socialism and Forgetting the Past

I’m sharing this story in light of how polarized the US has become, and how many young people and college students today romanticize socialism and even Marxism. Some cities, like New York, may even elect socialist leaders.

It’s made me reflect on how easily freedom is taken for granted in the US. Many of those who constantly complain about the state of this country have never lived anywhere else, especially not in a full-on socialist regime like my father’s.

And I’m not excluding myself from this either.

In my younger years, I used to talk shit (my immature, angry anarchist-revolutionary phase), criticizing everything: the Founding Fathers being slave owners, imperialism, wars, the military-industrial complex, the genocide of Native Americans, the corruption in government, taxation being theft, the issues with capitalism, the religion of statism, etc.

Some of those critiques are valid to a degree. No government can ever give you “true” freedom, as anarchists philosophically argue [and I still believe taxation is theft.]

Real Freedom Begins Within

However, I’ve also come to realize that true freedom and sovereignty are largely an internal matter.

What good is external freedom if you’re still a slave to your desires, unconscious wounds, triggers, shadow projections, mechanical reactive knee-jerk behaviors, or cultural and social conditioning?

I’ve had it pretty damn good here in the US so far, and I would say that goes for most of you reading this, especially compared to what my Dad and many others endured under socialist and communist regimes.

The life I’ve created here since moving to the US 31 years ago, at the age of 22, is something I likely could not have achieved in Western Germany or anywhere else in Europe.

The level of freedom and opportunity I’ve experienced, I know I wouldn’t have had in more socialist-regulated countries (even “champagne socialism” like most of Europe today), where government control and taxation are far more restrictive.

Of course, the US is not perfect. No country is. Just like there’s no single person on this planet who is perfect (unless you’ve attained full enlightenment, in which case, there is no “you”).

There are real problems. Corruption. Injustice. Exploitation. All of that is true to varying degrees. I don’t see the US as some perfect utopia. We’re still far from unity or peace in terms of the collective evolution of consciousness. Any outer system or government is also a reflection of our inner state.

As above, so below. As within, so without.

The Battle for Consciousness

We’re in this for the long haul. The next few decades will be turbulent as the Asuric hostile forces push for more control in an Orwellian, socialist-style New World Order and try to destroy the West.

However, there will also be a counterforce toward awakening and sovereignty as we move through this Time of Transition, both karmically, collectively, and individually.

It’s the descent and ascent at the same time.

There’s nothing to complain about. We chose to be here and participate in this human experience. Essentially, we don’t get to move on until we have learned our lessons on all levels.

There can be no outer freedom if we have not attained inner liberation. Everything we have suppressed, avoided looking at, and ignored, not only needs to but will come up.

The more we resist, the more difficult it will be; the more we externalize, the more lost we will be. At the same time, we must not shy away from outward action.

This kind of unconditional surrender to the necessary purification process [and ultimately to the Divine] is not easy at first for most of the resistance is unconsciously buried deep within us behind the thick [psychological and emotional] armor we’ve accumulated over lifetimes, including ancestral trauma and karma.

From a yogic and astrological perspective, we are entering the “eye of the needle.” This transformative upheaval is expected to intensify over the next three decades. But don’t fear the future. Rejoice and embrace these times. Take on the challenges like the spiritual warrior you are.

Grace and Gratitude

This is a battle on multidimensional levels, but the Divine will always prevail, yet we still have to play our part and never take freedom for granted.

If I’ve learned anything from my father, it’s that there’s a divine power guiding us all. With faith, determination, and healthy optimism, we can overcome anything and rise in our true inner power.

I’m deeply grateful to this country for the freedom it has given me, freedom that my father could only dream of as a young man behind the Wall. His courageous escape, his dream fulfilled, gave me the foundation for the life I now live.

I will never take that for granted. I will protect and defend that freedom, within and without, with God’s help.

Godspeed.