THE HUMAN COST
GERMANY

They Threatened to Kill My Father

Ivette was only five or six when she answered the family telephone and heard a caller threaten to kill her father. She also remembers stones thrown at her sister and camera crews waiting near her school. These were the frightening experiences that punctuated her childhood.

NAME
IVETTE
OCCUPATION
CHILDHOOD WITNESS
The Brainwashing of a Nation: Germany’s Scientology File, by Peter Schulte

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For decades, few subjects in Germany have generated more controversy than Scientology.

It was investigated. Debated in parliament. Monitored by intelligence agencies. The subject of government warnings, court cases and countless headlines.

But behind all of that was another record—the government’s own.

“ALL OF IT FOR WHAT? NOTHING.”

—IVETTE

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TRANSCRIPT

My name is Ivette. My father was German, my mother is Austrian. As a kid, I grew up in Germany. We were a normal German family.

Life was—every day there was something with discrimination or people who wanted to harass us just because we were Scientologists.

I know that my sister went horse riding with her friend. There were kids in the village who threw stones at them because they were Scientologists. One day I was going to school, I think I was six or seven, and we had journalists and cameramen in the bushes in the driveway to our school. They were standing there to jump out to film us kids so they can say something on TV about our school because we were Scientologists. There were no stories to tell. We were just normal children who went to school. So, such things happened all the time.

I remember when I was five or six years old, at that time, we got calls at home. People called and threatened me that they would kill my father. So, just imagine that you have a six-year-old child who is picking up the phone, and someone tells you, tells this child that they want to come and kill your father. And it was only because he was a Scientologist. And because it was just discrimination against us and against our religion.

All of it for what? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

THANK YOU.

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