Across the Ocean

“My aunt, who was the oldest daughter in my mother’s family, was the first one to come to the GDR as a contract worker. After some time, she started sending letters home. She wrote about how nice life was in Germany and so on. There was hardly any mention of sacrifice and discrimination. Later, when I visited her for the first time in 2014, I was surprised at how difficult her life actually was. Even though I remember she kept telling me to be careful during our communications because calls and messages could have been recorded. I didn’t understand why she was so obsessed with this fear until one day I discovered that, in most cases, communication between the contract workers and German citizens outside of work was strictly forbidden and controlled by both German and Vietnamese authorities. I wonder how much truth there was in the letters she sent home across the ocean, and how much of it became reality in her perception”.