Erika has been called “the miracle baby” that survived the expulsion of ethnic Germans from the Warthegau region which became part of Poland after WWI. Thanks to her courageous mother, Erika miraculously lived through three dangerous and life-threatening flights during the very early years of her war-torn childhood:  First, as a baby in the arms of her mother fleeing from the Red Army, then on the back of her mother escaping from years of Polish slavery, and later tightly holding on to her mother’s hand while escaping Soviet occupied communist East Germany.

Driven from her ancestral home in the Warthegau and suddenly homeless on icy streets, Erika’s mother fled from the approaching Russian Army during the last months of WWII with baby Erika in her arms and three young daughters.  The streets of eastern Germany were covered with “German dolls” (dead German babies) and German women and children who were raped and murdered on their desperate flight from the Russian Army. Trying to save their lives, mother and daughters labored as slaves at two Polish farms for almost three years after the war had ended. There they endured starvation, torture, and constant threats to their lives. To escape slavery, they fled in the autumn of 1947 to East Germany, the then Soviet-occupied zone of Germany which became the GDR.

Seeing no freedom and future in the communist-ruled GDR, Erika’s mother carefully planned yet another flight. Erika remembers practicing and executing this escape. After running through a forest, her mother took Erika’s little hand and they carefully crawled on the soft, muddy ground, making sure not ever to lift any part of their bodies that might touch the electrified barbed wire fence. They heard voices; they heard dogs barking; but they quietly kept crawling side by side, making not the slightest sound. By some miracle, they survived the border police with their guns, watch towers, and barking dogs.  When Erika’s thankful mother tearfully knelt on the muddy ground and kissed it, the bewildered child Erika said, “But Mom, it’s raining here too. Is this really the Golden West?” Still crying with joy and relief, her mother lifted her up and said, “Yes, yes, my child, we are in the West and its gold is our freedom.”  Erika spent the rest of her childhood in West Germany.

After a brief acting career in New York, Erika completed her Ph.D. in intercultural communication at the State University of New York, Buffalo. She has published numerous articles about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, managing interracial conflict, and listening effectively across cultural and generational divides. Erika has been a visiting scholar and intercultural communication consultant in Germany, India, China, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, and South Africa. She has directed study abroad programs in Germany, Australia, Singapore, and Malaysia. She received a Fulbright Professorship in Taiwan, Republic of China and was honored as a “Listening Legend” by the International Listening Association. She is Professor Emeritus of Intercultural Communication at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. She is the author of The Will to Live: A German Family’s Flight from Soviet Rule, and Silent No More: Personal Narratives of German Women who Survived WWII Expulsion and Deportation.