FRIEDLAND REFUGEE CAMP GERMANY 1980's

Friedland, Gottingen, Lower Saxony, Germany circa 1985. Friedland refugee camp, a Russian Soviet-German family return as refugees from the Soviet Union and to freedom in the West. This extended family have just arrived in the camp. The photographs shows grandmother, her children, with their wives and husbands and her grandchildren. During Perestroika in the 1980s, the Soviet borders were temporarily opened and the beginnings of a massive migration of Germans from the Soviet Union occurred....
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Friedland, Gottingen, Lower Saxony, Germany circa 1985. Friedland refugee camp, a Russian Soviet-German family return as refugees from the Soviet Union and to freedom in the West. This extended family have just arrived in the camp. The photographs shows grandmother, her children, with their wives and husbands and her grandchildren. During Perestroika in the 1980s, the Soviet borders were temporarily opened and the beginnings of a massive migration of Germans from the Soviet Union occurred. Entire families, and even villages, would leave their homes and relocate together in Germany or Austria. This was because they needed to show the German Embassy certain documents, such as a family Bible, as proof that their ancestors were originally from Germany. This meant if a family member stayed in the Soviet Union, but then decided to leave later, they would be unable to because they would no longer have the necessary paperwork.
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