Freedom's Nightmare - Harald Zieger

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Résumé :
If I board the wrong train, it is of no use running along the corridor in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer What if I did not board the wrong train, but I had been thrown into it? What if it takes me years to realize that the train I've been thrown into by decisions of generations of ancestors is traveling in the wrong direction? What if I find out that all my strife to realize my dreams are null and void because Dietrich Bonhoeffer was right? What if my decision to leave that train is a dangerous, even deathly, fight, yet my desire overcomes the fear, and I jump? I jump into a fight for freedom. And against all odds, I win? At a cynical moment, I could think I experienced life in bondage which came about as a result of the mistakes and errors of previous generations. And how that bondage originated, I knew from studying history. Now, I can experience the way of a nation in bondage. What a unique opportunity. But only if I were cynical would I think that. Comparing my life environment - a country I lived in - to a train seems a little odd, but when one thinks about it, it is comparable. If you are on a train, the engineer controls the speed and the stops, and the rails determine the destination. The only influence for a passenger is to pull the emergency stop. Or jump off the train, which is very dangerous. That is the situation of living in a socialist or communist country. That was true for 32 years of my life. Interested?

Biographie:
Harald Zieger, raised behind the Iron Curtain, thoroughly indoctrinated with the communistic ideology, was a card-carrying member of the communist party when his belief system was scattered by the confrontation with GOD's word; as a graduated engineer, he served at a Navy base until he was expelled for publicly declaring his faith. After a ten-year fight with the almighty State Security Police (STASI), he could leave what he calls one of the largest prisons on earth. Twenty years later, he realized his lifetime dream and immigrated to the United States, only to realize that he was again on a train heading in the wrong direction. Harald is married and has two children and seven grandchildren.