A mother's heart never forgets - forced adoption in Germany E-Book

Brigitte Kohrs

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Serie: Ein Mutterherz vergisst nie - Zwangsadoption in der BRD
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 151

Beschreibung

Ein Mutterherz vergisst nie - Zwangsadoption in der BRD, ist seit 2012, als meine eigene Biographie auf dem Buchmarkt. Da ich einige Anfragen hatte, ob es meine Biographie auch in Englischer Sprache gibt, nachkommen wollte, habe ich mein Werk in Englischer Sprache übersetzen lassen und möchte es nun, meinen Lesern, in Englischer Übersetzung,zur Verfügung stellen.

Leseprobe

Table Of Contents

Foreword

Copyright

Foreword

This book is about a real story. The main character of the book is myself, as a 15-year-old girl who, at that moment, still believes in the kindness of people and then undergoes bitter disappointment and, to date, never more trusted the beautiful words of a human. I do not trust gynecologists, or physicians in hospitals, or nurses, or child protection offices or authorities, since all these groups of people have lied to me, deceived me and treated me inhumanly. All of them deceived about my babies. I was physically and emotionally abused by them. In my whole life I will never forget what I had to go through at the early age of 15. Was what you did to me for the good of an infant, an under age mother who was happy waiting for her children and living in a regulated social environment? Taking her babies away after she gave birth. Give me finally sincere answers to all my unanswered questions, after the why. Stop lying to me to date. It can only remain in the past, when I know the truth, and finally someone talks to me about what happened in 1973 to tell me why, what for, for what reason. What happened to my daughters after they were born? Who did you give them away, you inhuman beings? Did one of them really die in your hands or did you give the two of them away to different families? Speak once and for all. Stop denying my tragic case to date.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the people who have stayed beside me, in words and in fact, during my search. Special thanks to my dear mother, who unfortunately could not meet her granddaughter, since she passed away suddenly in March 2008. Thanks to my dear husband who has been actively involved for years in my search and always supported and comforted me fondly when I was running out of strength or when the arbitrariness of the authorities shattered me. My appreciation to the sister of the gynaecological clinic who gave me my mother card instead of making it disappear in the paper shredding machine as she had been told to do. Thanks to a few employees in the ministries and authorities who did not hide behind the law on the marital status of people but, instead, heard their hearts.

Epilogue

I want to dedicate this book,A Mother’s Heart Never Forgets – Forced Adoption in the BRD, to the people who have lost their children due to the plots of third parties, due to forced adoption as their children were forcibly taken away from them without any regard for the consequences a biological mother and the families of the children have to cope with throughout their lives. I hope that, with my book in the hands of public opinion, I can open the eyes of people who have been actively engaged in forced adoption. As a biological mother who became a victim of forced adoption in real life, I want to attract the attention of all these people – authorities and child protection services – about the fact that separating a whole family forever is not always for the good of the under age. Here you will learn what happens when such a violent injustice is done to a mother. With what kind of corrupted practices against biological mothers do steps rudely violating all human rights start? I was just 15 and I am still deeply traumatized for this inhuman treatment in that maternity hospital in Berlin. With my book, I want to attract attention to the fact that forced adoption was carried out not only in the DDR but also in the BRD. I was just 15; I was really a girl and had to go through being violently deprived of my daughters against my will by the State Service of Child Protection in Berlin.

Legal note

A Mother’s Heart Never Forgets. Forced Adoption in Germany

The National Library of Germany registers this publication in the National German Bibliography; detailed bibliographical data are available on the Internet inhttp://dnb.d-nb.de

© 2015 Brigitte Kohrs

Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

ISBN: 9783739215815

Herstellung und Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand, Norderstedt

I would like my story to start like this: “Once upon a time...”, but this is how the fairy tales I liked when I was a kid start. What I have to tell is not a fairy tale but an endless nightmare. Forced adoption in the BRD. You may now be thinking, something like that in the BRD, was there something like that in the BRD? I used to think it only happened in the DDR. I became a victim of the plots of physicians, nurses, child protection services and authorities. My twins, even nowadays I do not know whether they both are alive or only one of them, because no one spoke to me. My pregnancy and my lab - or must have been concealed at the maternity hospital in Berlin. In this book, you will frequently read that I write about my children, and that is true because I gave birth to 2 identical babies on 09/16/1973; afterwards, all my lights went out, that is I stayed like dead, shut off because of too much anaesthesia. Three hours afterwards I woke up completely stunned in an empty room. The objects were covered with white cloth. There was deathly silence everywhere. I felt stunned and exhausted. My initial weight before my pregnancy was 45 kg, so you can imagine how graceful I was. But no one really cared about that. I was just the thoracic cavity for those who were in that torture room that was not a delivery room. My first thought was: where are my children? My second thought: where am I? Am I dead or still alive? In that awful game I was always the victim. None of them showed any consideration for my feelings, my fears, or my mother’s heart. Every day I wonder why me, why my children, what wrong did I do, aside from being a 15-year pregnant under age. Is that a reason for them to treat me so inhumanly? No, it is not a reason. It is not easy for me to write about what I lived, but I also realize that it sets me free and I hope my message can reach everybody and set a precedent that nobody has the right on earth to treat people so degradingly, just to follow an administrative order. With my story, I want to encourage all mothers and their relatives to keep looking for their forcedly adopted children, to never lose their faith and hope, even if the road leads to an abyss. My hope is that the Child Protection Service its personnel and the authorities – read my story and reconsider once again what they do to whole families when they take a baby away from its under-age mother, supposedly for the benefit of the under age; they must realize their opinion that, due to her age, she would not be able to raise a child is wrong, they should first examine the whole family situation and, afterwards, decide together with the biological mother about the well-being of her child. A mother’s heart does not depend on age; I know very well what I am writing about. I look for my children that were taken away from me since 09/17/1973. It is not a forgotten issue; it is the preferred maxim of the personnel working at the Child Protection Service. What do they know about what a mother may think and feel when she falls into their net of lies and, with a permanent smile on their faces and beautiful words, they say, it happens for the benefit of the under age?. They lie coldly to mothers and their relatives in order to integrate the child into an unknown family. Are all of them really aware of how inhuman a forced adoption is to all who are involved? To date I have not realized that taking my children away from me has been any good to me or my family or, without any doubt, the resulting consequences, the psychological damage they have left behind. It does not matter, the fundamental thing is what is in the file of the Child Protection Service – “for the benefit of the under age”… I despise them for what they did to me, to my children and to my family. The machinery of the authorities is cold and heartless. I was just a case, a file. A pregnant under age. But, in fact, I was a 15-year-old under age who was pregnant; I was seriously engaged and was raised in a home with a stable family. We had a 104-square-meter apartment in Berlin, on floor 20 with a bathroom for guests. We lived there with four people. There were 5 rooms and one of them would be for my daughters. Both my parents worked. My father was an electronic specialist and my mother worked as a sales clerk. My sister had just started her training as an educator. My life went on the right way. Once my twins were at home, my mother wanted to have a part-time job because she thought I could look after the babies in the morning. That was not a problem for me either, since I was a responsible 15-year-old pregnant girl. I went to all the preventive check ups with my gynaecologist. I lovingly cared for my babies since they were in my womb. I caressed my pregnant belly every day at each moment and talked to my children. We could hardly wait for them to be born; we all were excited and made plans for the babies. My boyfriend, the father of my little girls, came from a stable family too. His father was the manager of an establishment in Berlin, his mother was a housewife. He moved to Berlin when he was 3, they had lived in Westphalia before. My boyfriend finished his training as a topographer. It was really strange for him to become a father at the age of 18, but he was very happy and wanted to support me and his little family. The only ones that did not completely agree with our being very young and my pregnancy were my father, a strict catholic (sex before marriage is a deadly sin), and my boyfriend’s parents. There we constantly heard, “you are too young to become parents.” My father cried for me, for my early pregnancy, almost at all times; well, thought we, everyone will be happy once the babies are born. But we were wrong even about that supposition. The intrigue of making a decision against my babies unfortunately stemmed, as I found out years afterwards, from our own ranks. It was very painful to me because I did not expect that, as I trusted. Apparently, there were some exceptions, like my mother, but no one cared about what we wanted; just meddling in somebody’s life is inhuman but it would be much worse, this is just the beginning of the book and my true experiences. I lived in an incredible, inconceivable nightmare. I felt in real life like in a horror movie. Read my story and have your own impression about the nightmare I have to go through. Alone and solitary, all the people that mattered to me were manipulated and silenced, none of them could be on my side, no one to trust, just because they wanted my babies. You may be wondering, who wanted her babies? As I have already mentioned before, the traitor unfortunately was a member of my own family, it was the only way for the child protection service to reach my children, their blackmailing attempts made a family distrust one another and nobody trusted any one any more. That was the plot of the civil servants of the child protection office in 1973. A day before my babies were born, my mother was inhumanly blackmailed and placed under pressure. My mother could not endure that pressure, they were so many. My nightmare started in 1973. The true story of my life. Nothing here is invented. All stories match reality. The phone rang. I had just come home from school and prepared my favourite dish: pasta with tomato sauce. My absolutely favorite meal when I was 15. Mother and daddy were still at work and they did not come home until the evening. I ran to the phone and was full with joy. My boyfriend called me, we had been together for a year. He was my first love and had taken our affair very seriously. My boyfriend was 3 years older than me and was accepted even by my father, a truly catholic man, though my dad went to look inside my bedroom at least 20 times when my boyfriend was with me. When the door opened and daddy stuck his head to ask something, I used to say, “Daddy, everything is fine.” He laughed mischievously and closed the door with satisfaction. Daddy took care of me like the apple of his eye. I could understand him, because I was under-age and my parents had the duty of looking after me, a duty they took very seriously. My boyfriend had a home too and his parents were not always there. He called me exactly one of those days. We agreed to meet in December 1972 in the afternoon at the subway station and he picked me up on time. He was radiant and said, “the way is clear. Well, that is great, thought I. Finally, without the watchful eyes of our parents. I was so excited. I asked him when his parents came home and he said, “very late,” and smiled. He and I had stayed together for a year and nothing had happened between us, except for some hugging and curling up. As he almost always visited me, nothing could happen between us as my father was there and he always had a watchful eye on us. Well, I thought, if it happens today, it is because we both want it. It happened for the first time and a little more. The condom tore, wonderful - thought we- and now” “Oh,” I told Peter, “once a year does not matter,” I was wrong in that. It happened in December 1972. I asked my boyfriend, “what if I get pregnant? What will our parents say?” Oh, God, most of all my father who always protected me and wanted to prevent this first time because he thought I was too young to have sex. My mother had to know about it first. Thoughts whirled on my mind until my boyfriend stopped the movie inside my head and made me go back to reality. “Honey, first let’s wait patiently to see if you got pregnant. Let’s not think about it any more. Anyway, I’m going to back you and the baby.” Then he took me in his arms. He walked me back to the subway station at night and I came home remorseful and hoping that nobody home knew what I had done. As I came home, I said hello to my family and went immediately to my bedroom. Next morning, my parents went to work and I went to school as usual. I did not tell anyone what I had done the day before, not even my best friend at school. Neither did I tell about my supposition of getting pregnant. I could not concentrate in classes, all kinds of thoughts rushed on me. If I was pregnant, how shall I tell my parents? First I tell Mother and, as regards dad, how should I tell him? With time, he will see my swollen belly. I will tell my elder sister, she will undoubtedly back me. Lost in my thoughts, I ran into my best friend at school and she said, “Hey, are you asleep?” I was scared and startled, “no, it’s ok,” she looked at me in a strained way. Did she see or realize about what had happened yesterday? I calmed myself down, as my boyfriend had said, not to think about it, wait patiently. Maybe I’m not even pregnant. Once a year does not matter! I was wrong. In February 1973 I missed a period, and now what, thought I. I tried to repress the related nausea and did not want to immediately believe I had gotten pregnant. I had been instructed in that sense but we had taken precautions. Unfortunately, it went wrong and we were not responsible for that, but that idea did not comfort me either. I did not tell anyone about my supposition and wanted to wait until March. When my boyfriend asked me, “so, are you pregnant?” I told him, “I’m still waiting.” I missed a period in March too, a pregnancy test was mandatory. How can I get the money for a pregnancy test? I did not have any money, neither did I want to tell Mother about it before being sure that I was pregnant. On Sunday evening, I plucked up courage and went to see Mother, who was doing something in the kitchen. “Mom,” said I softly, “tomorrow I want to go for a walk, can you give me some money, please?” My mother was a wise woman and, above all, she knew her little girl very well. My mother knew it was urgent and gave me the 20.00 marks while she smiled warmly and just said, “what’s going on, are you pregnant?” Flush went all around my face and I just thought, how is it that my mother knows? Someone betrayed me. Nonsense! Who can it be, my boyfriend has stayed firmly, I could trust him. He will not betray me. Mommy kept looking at my brown eyes deeply. “No, what do you think of me?”, I got angry, waiting that daddy did not come, but he was watching the evening newscast on TV, how lucky!, thought I. Mother stopped insisting and I rushed to my bedroom, good night – I shouted – and thank you, mother. In the evening from Sunday to Monday, I turned over and over on my bed and woke up very early, completely exhausted. I would not go to school today; besides, I felt bad again in the morning. I stuffed myself with a toast and a cup of tea and waited until the pharmacy in my Town shopping mall opened. The time had come, I walked slowly to the pharmacy. Fearfully, I opened the door to the pharmacy and came in. A kind clerk came to me and asked me, “Well, what can I do for you?” she smiled warmly and removed my fear to ask. “Do you have a pregnancy test that is safe?” stammered I insecurely. She immediately walked and showed me a pregnancy test – “This is new and safe, 19.90 marks.” I thought of my mother, she had given me exactly 20.00 marks, what a coincidence or, did she know? My mother always had a seventh sense.

Image 1: My parents