On Monday December 9th of this year, I was asked by my daughter Karen’s history teacher to address his class on my experience with the Immigration/Naturalization process. Normally I turn down such requests because for the last 40 years I have seen myself as an American. This year though is different for a few reasons, and I agreed. The biggest reason is this year marks the 40th anniversary the beginning of not only my journey to becoming the woman I am today but my path of becoming an American citizen. When my daughter Karen heard my story during her class she informed me that I should share my story here at BC.

I think the best place to start is to give you a little background about your author. I was born Jardani Ennis on August 5th, 1967, in a small farming village in the Bosnia-Herzegovina region of Yugoslavia 189.5km from the Hungary, and Romania borders. I was the oldest child of five children. My parents owned a small farm, and we lived in a modest two story house that had three bedrooms on the third floor. While we had electricity we still to heat our home and cooked with wood or coal. Our water came from a handpump in the kitchen. The only modern convenience of the 60’s we owned was a radio in the living room. In many ways our home was still in the pre-World War Two era.

The village was populated by a very diverse group Slavic peoples. There were Romani, Bosniaks, Serbs, Croats, Christians, Jews, and Muslims. During the Cold War my village was often targeted by the Tito Communist Socialists because of our ethnic diversity. It was nothing for the State Police to come into town with a list of names and arrest people for crimes of sedition against the State. Sadly, that village is no longer there. It was destroyed during the Yugoslav Wars of the early 1990s for the same reasons that the Socialists used to arrest my family and friends. The ethnic purity of the Serbian or Croatian people.

Thankfully I was not there when the Serbs and Croats came to destroy my home. If I had been I surely would have been killed because of my Romani blood. Though it was that same blood that forced me to begin my journey to the English speaking West in the May of 1984. A journey that ended on December 24th of that year.

My story starts in Riveran, Yugoslavia May 8th, 1984. The day had been unseasonably warm. I can still remember the smell of the freshly plowed farm fields. For me it had started off like any other day. Helping my father around the farm.

“Jardani!” The sun had just begun to set when I hear my mother calling my name from the kitchen door to our home. Because I was the oldest son it was my duty to help around the family farm by taking care of the cows, pigs, and draft horse. The Great Soviet 10 Plan for modernizing Yugoslavia was still 17 years behind schedule for our area. While my younger brother and sisters attend school I work around the farm. I may not go to school, but mama and papa have taught me more than the State approved teachers ever could. At 17 I could already read, write, and speak five of the major Central European languages plus English.

As I look out the barndoor at my papa I still find it hard to believe that until the year before I was born he was a respected University Professor. Then because he dared to love a Romani woman my father was cast out by the university and the Party. My mama didn’t escape persecution as she was also cast out by her family and tribe for daring to love someone who was not Romani. Knowing that my papa won’t come in for another hour or so I headed inside. I should have known something was wrong as I walked from the barn to the house. I could hear the sounds of military trucks passing along the road in front of the house. I entered the house to find my mama packing a backpack with some of my clothes and canned food.

“Mama what are you doing?” I asked her in confusion.

“The Recruitment trucks have come again Jardani. You’re old enough for them to take you this.” Mama said as she rolled up two heavy wool blankets. Hearing that the trucks were back I quickly moved to help her only to have mama stop me. “I’ll will handle this. Go say your goodbyes to Emil, Flori, Marcela, and Zana. We don’t have much time before they return for you.”

“Yes mama.” I told her before giving her a quick hug and heading upstairs. I found my younger brother and sisters in their rooms. I gather them all in mine and Emil’s room. “I have to leave. Emil look after our sisters. Girls do what you can to help Emil and our parents around the farm.”

I’ll never forget their parting words or the looks of fear on their young faces. Emil wished me the best of luck. Flori told me to stay safe. Marcela just wanted me to be happy. Though it was little 5 year old Zana whose words that would haunt me to this day. Even now after 40 years I can still hear little Zana crying as she asked me why I have to leave. The last I saw of my baby sister she was in the arms of Flori as I walked out of my room for the last time.

Downstairs my parents were waiting for me in the kitchen. To my surprise papa was cleaning a TT-33 pistol. Setting on the table were five 8-round magazines all loaded with 7x25mm rounds. It was the same type of pistol he carried during his military service. Like all men of his age my father did his mandatory service before becoming an academic. He learned many skills during his 5 years as a soldier with the Jedinica za Specijalne Operacije or JSO. They were the elite Special Forces of the Yugoslavian military. When I turned 15 papa started teaching those skills, just as he would soon teach Emile. Skills that I would use to make my way to the West.

With the sun setting I shouldered my backpack, stuck the pistol in one jacket pocket with the spare magazines in the other. I turned to my mother gave her a hug and kissed her cheek then walked out the back door of my home. We never said a word to each other. I know that if mama had said one word my resolve would have crumbled and waited for the Commissars to pick me up. As I walked to far side of our farm my papa stayed beside me. He never said a word. I can still feel the weight of that silent walk after 40 years. The last time I saw him was at the tree line for the forest that marked the boundary of my home and the village.

The last thing papa gave me before heading back to the house was a map with my escape route. My route to freedom was both an arduous and convoluted one. While travelling overland through the Soviet Bloc to West Germany may have been longer it was saver than heading for the cost. In this part of the country the sight of a young man traveling by foot from farm to farm, village to village looking for work was less suspicious than one heading for the cost.

That first night was the hardest for me. I may have considered myself a man, but in truth I was a scared shitless kid running from an oppressive government. I traveled by moonlight through the woods. I covered 10 miles that first night. Not out necessity but out of fear. Under the Mandatory Service law, I was now a deserter. The punishment for desertion was 10 years imprisonment at a work camp. I pushed myself to cover as much ground as possible that night.

You might think I was a coward, but this was 1984 and many of Tito’s Communist party still had control of the military along with many positions of power. My papa knew that sooner or later civil war break out along ethnic lines. My papa had also seen how the growing economic crises would drive our nation to greater fracturing. My father didn’t want his children fighting in what he saw as a mindless war for Ethnic Nationality. To that end papa and mama planned to send each of us children to the West once we were old enough to make the journey on our own.

For the first 8 days I traveled only at night. The main reason for this was the need to avoid the Recruitment Patrols. The current governments of that region can deny the practice of forced recruitment at gun point all they want but I can attest to the fact that it did happen. All through the 60’s, 70’s, and early 80’s I watched as the oldest sons of several families were loaded into those trucks. Most of them never returned home because of the political policy of ethnic integration.

This is another dirty secret of those years. The Communist Socialists believed that by placing soldiers from one region in another to sever and never allowing them to return after their term of service it would alleviate the ethnic tensions through integration. The policy failed in so many ways that it wasn’t funny. In many ways this policy increased those tensions leading to many of the war crimes committed during the Yugoslav wars.

I have to honest barely slept during those first 8 days. I got an average of 4 to 5 hours of sleep each day. If I slept at all. On the 10th night I crossed through an unguarded area of the Hungarian border. If it hadn’t been for an abandoned barn I wouldn’t have stopped. I spent 2 days just resting in the barn’s hayloft. By this time my food stocks had run out and I was living off the land. On the 13th day of my journey, I broke the law. I stole two loafs of bead from a local bakery truck.

I made those two loafs of bread last for six days. On the 28th of May I entered a small enough village in Hungary that I wasn’t worried about the local Commissar. While I had money I had to use it sparingly. That meant buying a bus or train ticket was off the table. I used my meager founds for canned food stuffs. Most of which I had to buy on the local black markets. There was also the problem that I didn’t have the proper papers for traveling within the Soviet Bloc Nations. My best chance for rapid travel was hitchhiking. Even that wasn’t advisable because of the random roadside checks by the state police. If I got stopped at one of these check points I would be shoot. To that end I decided to walk.

It took me the rest of May, all of June and July to work my way across Hungary, and Slovakia. During that time, I worked on farms for a few days at a time. Usually for food and a place to sleep in the barn. During the first days of my escape one farmer in Hungary was able to exchange my Yugoslavian dinar for forint. I learned that most farmers in the rural areas didn’t care that I was a deserter or Roma. My accent often gave me a way. A few of the farmers even paid me, not much, but it helped. In Hungary it was forint. In Slovakia is was koruna.

I spent the first two weeks of August scouting for an unguarded or lightly patrolled section of fence to cross into Poland. While I scouted the border I managed to exchange my Slovakian koruna for Polish złoty. On the night of August 26th, I crossed the border with a 15 days’ worth of canned foods that I had bought the day before. Unlike in Hungary and Slovakia I could travel during the day while crossing Poland. Of all the Soviet Bloc Nations they were the most trusting of Roma. While traveling may have been easier it was still dangerous for me to use the roads and trains.

I spent the rest of August along with September, and October in Poland going from farm to farm working the harvest. I had more than a few close calls with the Polish Ministry of Public Security. To be honest I have to thank my parents. If it was for them teaching me first Hungarian, Slovakian, Polish, and German I would have been caught long before I ever crossed into Poland. I know that I could have made the trip from Yugoslavia to East Germany much faster, but safety was my first concern. That meant taking my time to scout my routes across the different borders. Each border crossing had to be made at night in poorly guarded sectors.

I especially took my time crossing Poland for a reason. I needed a night of the new moon, preferably during a fall storm, to make the crossing into the German Democratic Republic. You might know it better as East Germany. Of all the border crossings I would make during my flight to freedom only the crossing of the inner German border held a greater danger. At no other border was there a standing order for the guards to shoot to kill. The inner German border was also one of the most heavily patrolled and fortified of all the borders I across.

On the October 24, 1984, just after 0256 I crossed into East Germany between the border Polish and GDR patrols. I’ll be very honest. I got extremely lucky that night. I don’t know what happened to the second group border patrols that normally follows thirty minutes behind the first, but they never appeared. If they had been on time the guards would have found me hung up in the barbed wire.

To this day I can only hazard a guess as to what happened. One of the two trucks must have broken down. The distrust between the two nations was so great during that time there was a standing order on each side of the border. If one nation’s patrol stops for any reason, then the other nation’s patrol stopped as well. I can still feel the almost paralyzing fear to this day when I think of that night. When I finally worked my way free I headed for the nearest tree line on the East German side of the border. I covered an additional 4klm that night out of fear.

I stopped shortly after sunrise. I spent the day in an abandoned prewar hunting cabin. It along with several more such cabins were marked on a map that I had purchased in Poland. I could tell that it was often used by defectors from Poland heading for West Germany. There was an underground network going from the Communist East to the Democratic West for people like me. It was similar to the underground railroad for slaves in America.

Only there were no ‘conductors’ just waystations and supply points. With the occasional back alley guide who would sell you a map, or forged ID papers. Always at a premium cost. The rest was all up to you, your skill, and above all your luck. I doubt anyone knows how many people were captured before they ever got near the inner German border or died in their attempts to cross.

That was something else I had learned during my travels. The Soviet Socialist party wasn’t as welcomed as they wanted the West to believe. Even to this day, over 30 years following the Fall of the Iron Curtain, Communism and Socialism are four letter words in most of Europe. In certain parts those two words can get you a mouth full of knuckles or a knife to the gut.

I spent last of November and most of December working my way to the inner border. I knew better than to try my luck in Berlin. The Stasi were everywhere in the 80s. There were rumors that they would just shoot defectors in the streets of East Berlin. I don’t know if those rumors were ever confirmed but at the time I wasn’t going to take any chances. It took me most of November to cross the Germany countryside. Because of the added danger I was once again travelling only at night.

The only time I went into villages or towns was for supplies and close to nightfall. Even then I only visited black markets. By December 20th, I was running out of money and time. If I didn’t cross soon I would be either in jail or prison. When I scouted the inner border for my crossing point I discovered the reason they called it the zone of death. By the time I reached the inner border or frontier as the Germans called it. Most of barbed-wire fences were replaced with harder-to-climb expanded metal barriers, directional anti-personnel mines, anti-vehicle ditches, tripwires and electric signals to alert the guards to escapees, all-weather patrol roads, and prefabricated concrete guard towers and observation bunkers.

Though there were still places where you could cross. All a person needed was patience, skill, timing, and a whole lot of luck. I had the patience. I provide that during my journey. My papa had given me the skills and the training. As for timing that all came down to the night I would cross. As for luck, that all depended on the weather. On the evening of December 24th, I was out of time. I couldn’t wait any longer. My first three attempts at crossing the border the weather and the border guards had been against me, but that night my luck and the timing couldn’t have been better. The night was overcast with light rain showers. Visibility was less than 10 meters. It was also the night that I truly tested the Goddess Fortune.

I knew that it would take me all night to make my crossing. First there was the 5km of the restricted zone that I had to cross. If I got in this zone I was dead for certain. I was a Yugoslavian Romani in an area where just being a Romani could get you killed. Especially if I was caught by the East German Border Police and they had a Stasi officer with them. I made it through the restricted zone with absolutely no problems. The guards were either drunk or half asleep at their posts. I don’t know which, but I have to put it down to the season. It was Christmas eve after all, and the Germans were celebrating. Despite everything the Communists did, they couldn’t eradicate or subvert their traditional beliefs.

By the time I reached the actual border midnight just two hours away. As I scanned the my last 500m of my journey to freedom. What I saw didn’t fill me with confidence. I waited for over an hour watching for the patrol to pass along the all-weather road known as column way or Kolonnenweg. When they finally came I made my move. All that stood between me and the outer fence was the Kolonnenweg and its two control strips the Kontrollstreifen.

The Kontrollstreifen was a line of bare earth running parallel to the fences along almost the entire length of the border. There were two control strips, both located on the inward-facing sides of the fences. The secondary "K2" strip, 2 meters wide, ran alongside the signal fence, while the primary "K6" strip, 6 meters wide, ran along the inside of the fence or wall. Thankfully the area I had chosen to make my crossing there were no dogs and the mines had been removed. I took my time and made sure to cover my tracks as I crossed those bare patches of earth.

When I reached the outer fence I worked my way towards the only gap in this area. People were lead to believe that the outer fence was a solid fortification. The truth was that there were a number of places, that were more lightly constructed fences consisting of wire mesh and barbed wire lined the border. Most of those places were because of terrain. The fences were not continuous but could be crossed at a number of places. Gates were installed to enable guards to patrol up to the line and to give engineers access for maintenance on the outward-facing side of the barrier. I would have loved to use one of those gates, but they were always watched and were just too dangerous to use.

The section of fence I had chosen won’t be easy, but the bolt cutters that I had carried for my entire trip would make short work of the wire mesh and barbed wire. Even as I cut the last strand of barbed wire I could hear the road patrol returning. If they had caught me then they would have opened fire. No warning shoots just spray of bullets from a Wieger StG-940. I don’t know what happened, but the road patrol either never saw me or decided not to shoot letting me escape. To this day I believe that the guards choose to let me escape because of the time. I crossed through the fence I could hear the sounds of church bells sounding in the distance. It was December 25th, Christmas day.

I don’t know how long I lay there on the other side of the outer fence. I do known that I didn’t move until the road patrol had cleared the area. I may have cleared the inner border, but I still had another 188 meters of clear cut land to cross. I crawled that 188 meters on my belly. This wasn’t the first time I crawled on belly through a deadly border crossing area, but it would be my last.

When I crossed the actual line between West and East Germany I was on the far side of the outer strip. It was just before sunrise. I know that I was in West Germany and had reached freedom because the line was marked by granite stones with the letters "DDR" carved on the west-facing edge. Around 2,600 distinctive East German concrete "barber pole" markers were installed just behind the border line at intervals of about 500 meters. A metal East German coat of arms, the Staatsemblem, was fixed to the side of the marker that faced West Germany.

My first contact with people from the west was with a group of US Army soldiers on a road into Hof. They were members of the 2nd Cav. Regiment stationed in Bayreuth. I still remember those four young men who saved my life. They weren’t much older than me, but they were what soldiers shoulders should be, Defenders of a Freedom. Instead of turning me over to the German police like I expected them to do. Those young men took me back to their Post. They didn’t do it for the reward, but to make sure I got a chance at American Deam as they called it. They did turn me over to the authorities, but it was to their Commanding Officer. I spent that Christmas day eating a chowhall Christmas dinner with my four friends from the road.

I would spend another 9 days at that 2nd Cav post. During that time, I would be interviewed by agents from the US State Department and West German Government. I was finally granted asylum by the US Government on January 3rd of 1985 and transported back to the Fort Bragg, North Carolina, US. Just over 5 weeks later I did something that I knew would piss off my father.

I joined the US Army. I felt an obligation to the new country that took me in. The best way for me to repay that obligation was to serve in their military. I used my language skills and the training my parents have give me to become one of their finest soldiers, a Special Forces Ranger. I won’t go into what I was just that I was the one percent of the one percent. I spent the next 12 years serving in the US Army during that time I earned my citizenship. It was my path to citizenship that my Karen’s teacher wanted me to talk with his classes.

On this Christmas day I felt it was time to remember not only my journey to freedom but those four proud young men. This story is for Privet First Class Matthew Allen, Specialist Ray Slater, Specialist Mark Reed, Privet Jackson North, and all those who are far from home on this special day of days. You will always be in my heart brothers and sisters. May you soon be home with your families.

(Raises a 40 year old beer stein stolen from the 2nd Cav. EM Club in Bayreuth, Germany.) To those who cannot be here, and are still on the endless patrol.