Esslingen 2005
Pupil: “Back then, before you moved away from Germany, you probably had friends and acquaintances in the cities where you lived. Did you meet people again later when you came back or did friends perhaps perish in concentration camps? learn?”
Georg Iggers: “I was 11 - not quite 12 years old when I left. It was different for my wife. There were a lot of school friends with whom she resumed contact after 1945. In Czechoslovakia. When we returned to Germany in 1961 - ie I came back, you (Wilma Iggers) were there for the first time - I had no acquaintances or friends from the time. I was too young then. We made friends and got to know people very quickly. And as for relatives - had we don’t after the Holocaust.
Maybe you want to say something” [gives the floor to Wilma Iggers]
Wilma Iggers: “I corresponded with my classmates from Canada. And then we met for the first time in 1966 [unintelligible]. The correspondence actually only broke off for a very short time, because when Canada was already at war and the USA wasn’t, we were over at Niagara Falls crossed the border and were able to send letters there. And my relationships with people there have widened more and more. I had relatives there, whom I visited in 1966, whom I hardly knew. A cousin who [incomprehensible: in all substitutes was] and I had known her when I was three. She was now a woman with small children. That was how it was in many cases. The friendships then grew. With some I used to be my parents’ child, then I built relationships myself. In my hometown - such a center for me - I have contact with the cultural committee. They take care of the city’s cultural issues. The city is now Czech. She used to be 90% German. And the city that used to have 3,000 inhabitants, now 5,000, gave me honorary citizenship two years ago, which I am immensely proud of. I find it very nice. I visit her every time I’m there. In the meantime I also know the children, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I also went to class reunions all the years - not regularly but every now and then. These 40 years of communism have also caused a lot of damage. People grew old early and for a long time did not have the opportunity to make their lives easier and more pleasant as they do in the West. "