An East German speaks for the first time about her experiences before and after the wall.

The construction and eventual fall of the Berlin Wall, by its very nature, produced extraordinary stories. Ordinary people caught in the tide of history: families divided; the unbearable desire for freedom; the need to escape; the disappointment of the other.
 
Gabriele Beaudin embodies all of these. She was a child of the East, born in 1956 to parents who escaped to West Germany just after her birth, leaving her to be brought up by her grandparents. It was a simple and fun childhood with few worries but in her teenage years she had a longing to be free. Her parents sent her fashionable western clothes which she adored but these clothes also isolated her and restricted her prospects. She was told she had to conform in order to be accepted in to higher education. That wasn’t her style.
 
At the age of sixteen her chance came to change everything. With a fake ID, she made a dangerous crossing, by car, into West Berlin. There were no goodbyes to friends or her grandparents and overnight she was cut off from everything she’d ever known.
 
Change
Adapting was difficult. She says she’d never experienced jealousy or competition before and felt that she was being treated as a second class person by her western contemporaries. Within four years she left and vowed never to live in West Germany again.
 
After spending time in the Netherlands, London and Geneva, she moved to the US in 1995 and now lives in Orlando, Florida. She has an amazing story to tell but she often feels that Americans aren’t too interested. They’ve never known oppression she says and so there’s no real empathy.