Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall
    Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall
    Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall
    Audiobook10 hours

    Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall

    Written by Nina Willner

    Narrated by Cassandra Campbell

    4.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    In this illuminating and deeply moving memoir, a former American military intelligence officer goes beyond traditional Cold War espionage tales to tell the true story of her family—of five women separated by the Iron Curtain for more than forty years, and their miraculous reunion after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

    Forty Autumns makes visceral the pain and longing of one family forced to live apart in a world divided by two. At twenty, Hanna escaped from East to West Germany. But the price of freedom—leaving behind her parents, eight siblings, and family home—was heartbreaking. Uprooted, Hanna eventually moved to America, where she settled down with her husband and had children of her own.

    Growing up near Washington, D.C., Hanna’s daughter, Nina Willner became the first female Army Intelligence Officer to lead sensitive intelligence operations in East Berlin at the height of the Cold War. Though only a few miles separated American Nina and her German relatives—grandmother Oma, Aunt Heidi, and cousin, Cordula, a member of the East German Olympic training team—a bitter political war kept them apart.

    In Forty Autumns, Nina recounts her family’s story—five ordinary lives buffeted by circumstances beyond their control. She takes us deep into the tumultuous and terrifying world of East Germany under Communist rule, revealing both the cruel reality her relatives endured and her own experiences as an intelligence officer, running secret operations behind the Berlin Wall that put her life at risk.

    A personal look at a tenuous era that divided a city and a nation, and continues to haunt us, Forty Autumns is an intimate and beautifully written story of courage, resilience, and love—of five women whose spirits could not be broken, and who fought to preserve what matters most: family.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateOct 4, 2016
    ISBN9780062564856
    Author

    Nina Willner

    Nina Willner is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer who served in Berlin during the Cold War. Following a career in intelligence, Nina worked in Moscow, Minsk, and Prague promoting human rights, children’s causes, and the rule of law for the U.S. government, nonprofit organizations, and a variety of charities. She currently lives in Istanbul, Turkey. Forty Autumns is her first book.

    Related to Forty Autumns

    Related audiobooks

    Personal Memoirs For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz

      Jan 27, 2021

      The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz
      4 min read

    • Article

      Writing Political Poetry In Difficult Times: There’s A Reason Fascist Regimes Come For The Artists | Maxine Beneba Clarke

      Nov 8, 2021

      Some authors write for escape. I wrote poetry during the pandemic to process, to meditate on the world that was, to try and make some sense of things as a writer, and hopefully to offer some peace to at least one reader, somewhere, somehow. When Covi

      3 min read

    • Article

      'A Woman Of No Importance' Finally Gets Her Due

      Apr 18, 2019

      Virginia Hall was an American spy who worked for Britain and the U.S. and played a key role in undermining the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. Her story was rarely told — until now.

      5 min read

    • Article

      'The Tattooist Of Auschwitz' Is Flawed, Remarkable, Wrenching, Moving

      Sep 7, 2018

      This fictionalized account of true events is the strangest of all genres: a mostly true story about a Holocaust romance.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Best-sellers

      Feb 25, 2018

      Rankings for hard-cover books sold in Southern California, as reported by selected book stores: ___ Fiction 1."The Great Alone," by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin's: $28.99) A family discovers it is in peril after the father, a returning Vietnam War POW,

      1 min read

    • Article

      My Friend Anne Frank

      Jun 14, 2023

      My Friend Anne Frank
      12 min read

    • Article

      My Friend Anne Frank

      Jun 14, 2023

      My Friend Anne Frank
      12 min read

    • Article

      Allegiance

      Nov 6, 2023

      Allegiance
      12 min read

    • Article

      Mummy, I Hardly Knew You

      Oct 20, 2021

      Mummy, I Hardly Knew You
      7 min read

    • Article

      Camouflage

      Jun 1, 2020

      Camouflage
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Posting

      Jun 27, 2023

      The Posting
      35 min read

    • Article

      A Southern Christmas

      Nov 1, 2023

      A Southern Christmas
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Portrait

      Mar 1, 2018

      I WAS BORN almost completely deaf, and by the time I was seven I had already become a prisoner to my education. In the morning, I had speech therapy and tutoring with Mr. Bishop. We sat at my family’s long dining-room table, which was always covered

      9 min read

    • Article

      Oh! The Boardwalk

      May 30, 2023

      Oh! The Boardwalk
      3 min read

    • Article

      My Father’s House

      Apr 25, 2023

      My Father’s House
      6 min read

    • Article

      Descent

      Jun 14, 2022

      People got out in strange ways. No stranger, I suppose, than the ways they got in. One year an American military helicopter flew too low over an Italian ski village, killing two families headed up the lift. A woman at Hillcrest had Italian citizenshi

      22 min read

    • Article

      Diamonds

      Jun 4, 2018

      Diamonds
      9 min read

    • Article

      What Will We Do for Fun Now?

      Dec 15, 2020

      What Will We Do for Fun Now?
      23 min read

    • Article

      The House That Grandpa Built

      May 29, 2017

      WORDS JENNIFER FRIEDMAN MY GRANDPARENTS LIVED IN THEIR HOUSE IN PHILIPPOLIS FOR 58 YEARS. I visited often and despite its National Monument status, it’ll forever be the happy place where I felt safe and loved and valued. Grandpa built his sandstone h

      3 min read

    • Article

      Evidence

      Mar 6, 2023

      Evidence
      25 min read

    • Article

      Heidi High

      Nov 30, 2020

      Heidi High
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Forty Autumns

    4.5/5

    222 ratings39 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Excellent book & narration! I loved the characters, and I learned so much about a period that I really didn't know much about. I hope the author will write more books.
    • 5/5
      Excellent book! I learned so much about the Cold War, East Germany and what life was like for those people in that time period. I highly recommend this book!
    • 5/5
      Wow this really opened my eyes - I remember watching this all unfold as I graduated high school
    • 5/5
      I think this book needs to be required reading for everyone…it shows what really happens under communism. It’s not sunshine and rainbows. It’s turns neighbor against neighbor and even family members against each other.
    • 5/5
      Incredibly told story depicting the horrors of communism through a very personal lense.
    • 5/5
      A fantastic family story interwoven with Cold War history. It details the parallels of the lives of two sides of a family living on either side of a political divide. Fascinating and engaging, anyone who enjoyed Anna Funder's Stasiland would enjoy this family epic.
    • 5/5
      A must read for everyone. A lesson and story in one
    • 5/5
      Totally amazing story. Loved the historical fiction writing.
      Unfortunately, a well told horror story.
    • 5/5
      Incredible! The author told a valuable story. Informative, invigorating, an absolute delight. Thank you
    • 5/5
      Couldn’t put it down! It was a quick intriguing read.
    • 4/5
      The book was a great insight into East German life, and the events as they unfolded from just after WWII to modern times. However, the reader should have been someone able to pronounce German and Russian to a reasonable degree. I cringed every time a non-English word or phrase was spoken.
    • 5/5
      Well-written, engaging account of Eastern Germany told through the lens of family history. Informative and interesting. A biographical page turner.
    • 5/5
      As someone who remembers The Cold War,it was a personal look into one family,s years of separati.As a retired history teacher, I appreciat d the careful research by the. author.It is a book I would recommend especially to those who are too young to remember how valuable it.is to enjoy freedom.
    • 5/5
      Every American under 50 should read this book and think about what is happening here in the United States in 2021. As a nearly senior citizen we grew up fearing the Soviet Union was going to take over our free country. But as I see it now Americans are embracing communism of their own free will just as many did in Eastern Europe many years ago. Communism is a failed form of government. Wake up America read this book and others like it. Work to make your life better, the government will not make your life better. Eastern Europe found that out the hard way. Don't repeat their mistakes.
    • 4/5
      This is an interesting and engaging account of people’s lives and how humans are amazing when it comes to love, family, and adapting to circumstance.
    • 5/5
      Very historical and interesting! A great read about Germany and WW2
    • 5/5
      This book was the history that I never took notice of at school. A totally engaging story.
    • 5/5
      Forty Autumns, Nina Willner, author; Cassandra Campbell, narratorNina Willner has done a masterful job of bringing, not only the plight of her own family to life, behind The Iron Curtain, but also the history of the decades of The Cold War. What could have been written drily, almost as a text, was instead written with so much compassion, as it presents the facts, that it reads smoothly, almost like a novel. From the moment I met Oma and Opa, I was captivated, but then, I am also called Oma.After WWII ended, with her husband and son still not home from the front, Oma, pregnant with her seventh child as Russia invaded their space, replacing the Americans, feared for her daughter Hanna’s safety. Thus, Hanna’s first escape from East Germany was initiated by her mother, before the American soldiers left. Oma knew that the Russians had a reputation for looting and raping the women. She tried to save Hanna from such a fate, but Hanna did not want to leave her mother; although safe with American soldiers, she resisted and returned home, foiling her mother’s plan to save her. After that, it was impossible for the family to support Hanna’s effort to escape again, without facing punishment. They actually had to actively thwart her attempts. As the Soviet Union’s stranglehold tightened, Hanna regretted her return home and renewed her own effort to escape. Just a teenager, she engaged the help of an uncle to try to escape from East Germany. Unsuccessful attempts led to the third, which was the charm. She escaped, but unfortunately, it caused repercussions for her family. They now had a mark against their name and were watched and prevented from rising from their low station in life. They were a risk to the Soviet Union’s efforts to brainwash the people. Hanna, however, found freedom, love, a family, and eventually a life in America, but the life of her family in East Germany was the opposite. It was one of deprivation and fear, as they were constantly under the watchful eye of someone. Defiance was impossible. Those who tried it suffered the consequences. Boundaries were firm, rules were strict, threats against those who resisted proliferated. Although the Soviets said they came in peace, it was not their intention. They came to establish control over the population. Their food and property were confiscated. They were constantly harassed and observed to see if they broke any rules. Everyone was encouraged to turn in traitors who did not support the Communist regime. Schools indoctrinated the students with propaganda, making them think that the West was evil. They had no way to know otherwise, to see how the others lived, until decades later. One could not help feeling pain and concern for the plight of those trapped behind the iron curtain, but also relief that Hanna had the courage to run, and succeeded, so that this story could finally be told; the onion is peeled back, layer upon layer, so that the reader experiences the slow loss of their independence and rights, their imprisonment behind a wall that separated friends and families for decades. Slowly, though, the Germans acquiesced to Soviet rule. In order to survive, they began to support the Soviets, began to work for them and spout their doctrine, teaching it in their schools and supporting the government’s effort to make them good communists, in much the same way they supported Hitler. I had some conflicted feelings as I read about their humiliation and captivity. I am, as a Jew, perhaps more aware of the humiliation and worse, that the Germans had inflicted on so many millions of innocent victims, as many Germans proclaimed their ignorance of events, even though the vast majority supported Hitler.As life goes on for the family, the reader sees two parallel lifelines, one in Germany as the family becomes involved in communist life, some of them more than others, as they grow more and more disappointed with their treatment, but find ways to thrive, as they support their government, enter their armed service, even one, Cordula, competing in the Olympics for East Germany, and then, miraculously for the once again unified Germany. The other is their counterpart in America, the author and her family who are doing the same. From captive to joining the armed forces, from freedom fighter to spy, Hanna, Eddie and Tina rise above and beyond their own expectations. I had always found it difficult to understand how so many people could willingly be trapped behind an invisible wall, which soon became a real one. I had found it hard to understand how anyone could possibly support such an autocratic regime without mounting a strong resistance, but then there surely was the fatigue of war to hold them back and the hope that things would get better. The author has made it clear that they had no choice because of the threats and punishments actually carried out when someone betrayed this new government’s rules. A generation of children were brainwashed to become Communists, yet still, some defied the government, risked their lives and rebelled. Some lucky ones escaped, some less lucky, did not. Many died trying to escape to free countries. This book enlightens the reader about how important freedom is, especially once you lose it. Opa, who had fought in both major wars for Germany, in typical Germanic fashion, demanded obedience and respect for their conquerors. He hoped in that way to keep his family safe. Instead he imprisoned them, only to realize too late, if at all.It is important to have a print copy also, if you are listening to an audio of this book, because although the narrator is very good, the author has thoughtfully provided a map showing the area of the Iron Curtain, East and West Berlin and a family and historical chronology which is very helpful. It kept me on track and thoroughly engaged even with the extensive amount of information offered. The amount of work that the author put into this extraordinary memoir is outstanding. She has presented a coherent picture of what took place after WWII ended, right up to and beyond the fall of the wall, following her family’s current situation.The agreement that gave the Soviet Union so much control. as part of the spoils of war, condemned millions to live under an autocratic government, the likes of which had just been defeated. After such a war, it was hard to believe that so little was learned about human rights by so many. Perhaps this book should be required reading. If we don’t learn from history, we will be doomed to repeat it. One can’t help but wonder how FDR gave so much to the Soviet Union, allowing them to unleash such an evil influence upon so many. One can’t help but be grateful for President Reagan’s effort to “tear down that wall”.
    • 5/5
      This is the story of one family's survival in East Germany from the establishment of the communist regime following WWII through the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Moreover there are comprehensive details about the policies and practices of the allies and the East German government throughout that period. It was very interesting to remember events I experienced throughout my life in comparison to details the author shared about events in the lives of her family in East Germany.
    • 5/5
      I was interested in this book initially because my parents took me to Germany where my father was stationed with the Army in 1954 - 1955 (not sure of actual dates). I was 1 or 2 at the time. The timeline of the events that happened in my lifetime was interesting and a bit eye opening in today’s cultural climate.This is a very interesting read.
    • 4/5
      Under East Germany's hardline Communist government, the lives of ordinary citizens were bleak. Anyone could be a Stasi informer, and tight family bonds were the only ones that could be trusted. In Forty Autumns, former U.S. Army intelligence officer Nina Willmer describes how the members her mother's family (her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins) survived from the end of WWII to the collapse of the Berlin wall with their spirits and their dignity still intact. Not that it was ever easy. The family endured long years of separation from beloved oldest daughter Hanna (Nina's mother), who defected to the West and married an American. Moreover, the tension of going along to get along under the Communist regime gave Willmer's headmaster grandfather a nervous breakdown. And Willmer's cousin Cordula had to train at almost a superhuman level to keep her place as a member of East Germany's elite swim team.This is a sad, but eye-opening look at everyday lives behind the Iron Curtain. I highly recommend it.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely LOVED this book. The author's writing is superb. She intersperses the story of her family and the events going on at the time in Germany and throughout the region. The book also contains several black and white photos and several pages of color photos in the middle. Ms. Willner kept me on edge all through the book as I rapidly read to learn the fate of the remainder of her family. I was horrified at what went on behind the Berlin Wall and amazed at how the people kept going day after day. It was so well written I often forgot I was reading about a real family.Nina's mother was the oldest daughter and the only family member to escape from East Germany. Years would go by with an occasional letter arriving at its intended destination. East Berliners were totally shielded from news of the West. Anyone interested in history should definitely read this book.
    • 5/5
      Excellent story about on large family growing up in E Germany from 1945, through a brief U.S. Occupation, to 45+ years under Soviet Union control.The story focuses on Hanna, who escaped E Germany, was forced to go back, and 2 years later escaped for good. It details the ramifications this had on the rest of the family, until the Berlin Wall came down.The story follows Hanna, as she settles first in west Germany and then in America, her children as well as all of Hanna's brothers and sisters who she left behind.Any time people casually throw around terms like dictator, fascism, totalitarian, in regards to politicians in America just display their complete ignorance of what these words mean, and what it is like to live in such a situation.The East German government were horrible evil people, who destroyed their population all for the sake of power.This book details what happened if you stood up and said anything.This is an outstanding, fantastic book.
    • 5/5
      Touching and realistic account of a family's separation in East Germany/Berlin during the Cold War.
    • 5/5
      I almost didn't read this one, almost. It was due back at the library and quite lengthy, didn't know if I could fit it in, but three of my trusted friends on here rated it highly, so I thought I would just start it and see if I connected with the story. Obviously I did, finished in a few days, and was so glad I opened the cover.I was so young, during the Cold War, remember the fear of my parents, vaguely remember duck and cover, do vividly remember the air raids sirens and having to leave my desk to line up in the hallway, quietly, for some reason, they good sister thought if we were quiet and in a perfect line, we would be saved. I remember watching the the Berlin Wall coming down and the people rushing through. But those were pictures on television, this book is an actual telling of what it was like to live in East Germany, to have to watch everything one said and did. Centered on a large family, one whose daughter at the age of 17, escapes to, West Germany. From then on they would be a family divided, with little contact, always wondering and hoping when they would get word, meet again. I learned more from this book, not just about country but other things that were going on in the world, communism and how it eventually ended, than I ever did in school. It is however, the personal perspective, this book written by a granddaughter in the family, a woman who was in Army intelligence that made this a five star read for me. For the Oma and Opal in the story, the families matriarch and patriarch, I have the utmost respect. Making a family a port in the storm, family first, in a country that stressed loyalty to the state first, was an amazing and enviable accomplishment.
    • 5/5
      A riveting page-turner. This book keeps me up late at night. Nina Willner is a master storyteller. I had no idea how bad it was in East Germany after WWII.
    • 5/5
      The author had me at the second paragraph, "I felt alone and left out. I looked at them, then panned to the empty chair next to my desk, which got me wondering, where were my grandparents?" This is a wonderful read, full of lessons for all of us today. Thank you to Harper Collins Publishers and librarything.com for a copy of this book.
    • 4/5
      I had not previously read anything about East Germany after WWII, and I learned a great deal. The family story is indeed interesting, but I found the history involved even more so. You find yourself asking, "How did this ever happen?" and wondering what we can do to keep it from happening again. Well written and thought provoking.
    • 4/5
      This was a fascinating look at two families on both sides of the Berlin Wall during the Cold War. I really liked this book - it had a lot of historical detail, but it wasn't dry or boring. It's not typical that I'll read a non-fiction book all in two days, but this one did it for me.
    • 5/5
      a look at life under a dictatorship, this time East Germany, maybe foreshadowing life to come in the good ol' USA once it's made great again.