A Czech Border Guard’s Daring Escape to the West (471)
What happens when the man guarding the Iron Curtain decides to escape through it himself? In 1975, Jiří Barteček was a Czechoslovak border guard, trained to track fugitives with a German shepherd a...
29 Aug 1h 23min
Twenty-Six Years Apart: A Family Reunited Behind the Iron Curtain (470)
For twenty-six years, war, exile and the Iron Curtain kept one Polish family apart. Torn from his homeland and sent into Stalin’s labour camp system, Aleksander Jablonski survived hunger, forced labou...
21 Aug 54min
Announcing Cold War Conversations History Tours
I’m delighted to tell you about Cold War Conversations History Tours I'm exploring the idea of hosting a Cold War history tour via a specialist tour company, and I'd like your help working out what ...
19 Aug 51s
Between Two Air Forces: From East German Officer to German Captain (469)
After German reunification, former East German Air Force officer Roland faced an extraordinary transformation: joining the military alliance he had once been trained to fight. Roland recounts his d...
14 Aug 50min
MiGs, Helicopters and Ideology: Life as an East German Air Force Officer (468)
What did it mean to train as an officer in the East German Air Force, where technical skill, military discipline and socialist ideology were inseparable? Roland recalls his journey into the air arm...
7 Aug 44min
Growing Up Grey: Childhood in Cold War Romania (467)
Romania in the 1980s was a country of empty shops, power cuts, rationing and fear—but for one little girl it was also home. In this episode, author Oana Aristide shares the remarkable childhood experi...
31 Juli 42min
Defection, Spies and the Shadow of Georgi Markov (466)
In 1986, Oggy Boytchev made a split-second decision that would change his life forever. Sent to Egypt by a Bulgarian shipping company, he seized an unexpected opportunity to escape communist Bulgaria,...
24 Juli 41min
My Father - The Enemy of the People: A Bulgarian Family’s Cold War Story (465)
Oggy Boytchev is a former BBC journalist with more than three decades of experience reporting from conflict zones across the Middle East, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. Born in 1955, Oggy g...
17 Juli 59min
