The communist state in East Germany saw forced adoptions as an effective way to punish dissidents. The evidence didn’t come to light until after unification. Now children and their biological parents can find each other again.East German authorities frequently took children away from their families. An attempted escape to the West or an incautious remark could be all the reason necessary. The most perfidious cases were when parents didn't even know that their child had been taken away, but were told that their newborn infants had died. Twenty years after German unification, the emotional wounds of forced adoption have still not healed.