Forty Autumns Quotes

“What will become of a country...when a mother cannot trust her own children, and they, in turn, cannot trust their own families?”
― Nina Willner, Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall

“It pained Oma to watch her children enter the youth movement. Nothing good, she thought, could come from the East German regime manipulating the minds of the country’s vulnerable youth. She could see how such pledges filled with propaganda had taken the place of prayers and hymns in the way that they invited worship of an ignoble and sinister power.”
― Nina Willner, Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall

“The first challenge the Soviets faced was to change the mind-set of the almost 19 million German citizens who, long before World War II, had been led to believe that communism was the greatest threat to the Western world. Stalin demanded the transition be swift, and the approach uncompromising”
― Nina Willner, Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall

“Freedom is the most valuable thing a human being can possess. The only people who know that are people who have had to live without it. If you’ve grown up free, you don’t know what it means.”
― Nina Willner, Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall

“By now, news sources were simply organs of official propaganda used to bend the truth. There was virtually no mention of the outside world, especially the West, unless it was negative.”
― Nina Willner, Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall

“A garden can always change things,” she said smiling as she knelt down and dug her hands into the earth. “With new seeds there are new beginnings.”
― Nina Willner , Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall

“flag-waving enthusiasm was noted by Party leaders and”
― Nina Willner, Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall