The Secrets: Connections Across Divides

Abstract

Childhood memories are filled with secrets. Secrets have a potency to connect, to cross or to create a divide between people, generations, places, ideologies, borders, and geopolitical relations. They are agents of movement and action, despite the fact that they may be locked away in a person’s mind, heart, or body. A slight hint—a sensual intake, a word, or a shared memory may trigger the re/emergence of a secret. The ethnodrama presented in this chapter is created from memories shared during a collective memory workshop in Berlin in 2019 and is embellished with fictional characters, additions, and dramatisation to allow the reader to engage, make sense, or affectively connect to childhood secrets of the Cold War.