Gert Reifarth grew up in East Germany. In this essay, first published in Meanjin, he reflects on life behind the Iron Curtain and the tactics he used to circumvent government control. At one point, he sends coded letters to friends in the west so that they will smuggle in a copy of Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. As an adult now living in Melbourne, he discusses his feelings about the past and future of the former GDR.
