"We love our German homeland very much – to me, it is a second home."
Vũ Ngọc Roãn was born in Vietnam and moved to East Berlin to be a "contract worker" in 1982. "Contract workers" were hired by the GDR under temporary contracts from other socialist countries, mostly Vietnam and Mozambique. Vũ Ngọc Roãn worked in the VEB Narva lightbulb factory, close to where the East Side Gallery now stands. Today he is an entrepreneur, active in the textile industry and advertising. When he looks back at the period after the fall of the Wall, he recalls the bureaucratic hurdles that made staying in Germany so difficult as well as his delight at being able to get to know "the West". He also remembers new fears and situations in which he was threatened with violence. But Germany is nonetheless a second home to him.
Additional information:
The online exhibition "Eigensinn im Bruderland" shows eyewitness statements, materials and information on the life of "contract workers" in the GDR: https://bruderland.de/episodes/werktaetige/