refugee stories

1. Plamen’s story
REFUGEE SINCE 1989

4. I was born in Shoumen, Bulgaria.

5. Bulgaria was part of
the “Eastern
” or “Soviet” Bloc:
countries under the
control of the Soviet
Union.

6. In the 1980s, I was in my 20s finishing a
graduate degree in history at Sofia University

7. Despite
Gorbachev’s
Perestroika,
I was in disbelief
that the
Iron Curtain
will ever fall

8. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell down.

9. I left my country the same night when
Ceausescu was killed

10. A week later, I registered at the refugee
camp Traiskirchen

11. It seemed to me I was confined there for months.

12. I worked later at the Austrian National Library,
but always was made to feel “tschusch”

13. On my birthday in1991, I received a refugee
visa from the U.S.; it was mandating me to
leave within two weeks to Vermont.

14. It took me 10 years and 4 states to find my place

15. Share your experience and opinions:
http://blog.stcloudstate.edu/refugeesandmigrants/
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/09/how-
evolutionary-biologists-explain-
altruism.html?mid=facebook_nymag