I think it has been a tremendous feat on the part of East Germans since 1990 to adapt to everything changing.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The people in East Germany have lived through so many changes in the last 15 years like never before in the country, and they did this often with great enthusiasm. But in the West we also have a high degree of transformations.
Naturally enough, I couldn't have foreseen the vast sea change which has come upon that scene as a result of German reunification and associated events.
Very little changed fundamentally, except that the proud German soldier had turned into a defeated bundle of misery and the great German army had disintegrated.
The only thing the East German system taught us was that we should never do it that way again.
After the reunification, there was a certain sense of foreignness because daily life in the former East German states was completely turned inside out - everything from the shops to the bureaucracy to the working world.
I think tremendous change has taken place since the World Summit for Children in 1990.
Very early, it became clear to me that East Germany could not function.
Germany can make a major difference in the lives of so many Holocaust survivors who are struggling in their later years.
Man, it seemed, had been created to jab the life out of Germans.
It is nonsense to say that Germans are unable to change.