This summer I read "The Unquiet Ghost." This amazing book is about a journalist traveling through Russia and talking with people about the Stalin years. He interviewed people who were prisoners, servants, guards and others who had unique perspectives of those years. Stalin was extremely paranoid and suspected everyone was an "enemy of the people." Neighbors betrayed each other and families kept secrets from one another. In one servant's interview, she said that Stalin never slept in the same bed. He was afraid someone would come and kill him during the night. His secret police had conviction quotas and they were good at getting confessions. People who were not shot on the spot were sent to Kolyma, a camp in north east Siberia. Life for these people was torture.

This book made me think about Oma and Opa. In 1937, Opa was my age and I can't help but wonder what he was experiencing at that time. Why did opa think it was good to move from a communist country to a Nazi country? What year did they move to Germany? Did opa see any of secret police or know people that were sent off to Kolyma? Was the Ukraine too far from the hand of Stalin? Oma and opa met in a work camp. What kind of a camp was it? Was it the horror camps like Kolyma or were they like the CCC camps in America?

I thought I had an interview between my mom and oma concerning her courtship. But it was a very short interview about how oma loved school when she was little.

I was talking to Paul the other day and he was telling me some stories about opa that I have never heard before. I would love to hear your favorite opa/oma story. Or any answers to the questions above.