Berlin, Aug 12 (DPA) When Baerbel Gruebel was 25, she and her husband Ota decided they would risk anything rather than have their two young children grow up in Communist East Germany.

They were happy as a family, but found their contentment limited by the harsh Communist regime and its restrictions on freedom of movement.

In 1973, the family tried to flee across the Czech border into Austria, but Czech soldiers arrested them and sent them back to East Berlin, where they were sentenced to four years in jail.

Worse, their children were separated from them.

It was a devastating moment, particularly for Gruebel, a Berliner whose early childhood had been happy and uncomplicated -- until the Wall went up Aug 13, 1961.

'I was just twelve years old at the time and did not understand what was happening,' Gruebel said. 'I did not realise the enormous effect it would have on my future.

'West Berlin had been my life, my playground, my home -- although I lived in the East,' Gruebel said.

The Gruebels had pleaded that their children, Jens, then 4, and Jeannette, 3, be placed in the care of their grandparents in East Berlin. But government bureaucrats decreed otherwise and placed them in a children's home.

At a court hearing, the Gruebels learned to their horror that their 'right to parenthood' was being withdrawn.

They later discovered that their children had been given away for adoption to a couple considered loyal to the Socialist state. For 17 years the Gruebels would not see their children again.

Their case was not unique. More than 150 couples lost custody of their children after defying the Communist authorities during the 1970s. Most did not see their children again until the Wall came down in 1989 and the full extent of the East German 'enforced adoption' programme became known.

The Gruebels didn't see their children again until 1990. Years earlier, Jens and Jeannette had been told that their parents had 'probably been killed in a car accident'.

For Baerbel and Ota Gruebel the reunion brought mixed emotions.