The return home of the last prisoners of war in 1955 is one of the most moving chapters in German post-war history. "The Return of the Ten Thousand" is about hopes and fears, in the camps and among the relatives at home - in the Federal Republic and the GDR.
They are images that still touch us today: Those men who are welcomed by a wave of emotion in Germany in the autumn of 1955. Mothers embrace their sons, wives their husbands - after more than ten years of separation. Children stand speechless before their fathers, whom they can hardly remember - if at all. Yet the release hung by a thread: Adenauer is in Moscow in the summer of 1955 and wants to get the last prisoners of war out, but the Soviets refuse. Just as the chancellor is about to leave, Khrushchev invites him to the opera. It is the evening that changes everything.
The Prisoners: The Homecoming of the Ten Thousand
The return home of the last prisoners of war in 1955 is one of the most moving chapters in German post-war history. "The Return of the Ten Thousand" is about hopes and fears, in the camps and among the relatives at home - in the Federal Republic and the GDR.
