Visiting the STASI Prison

I don't talk too much about New Year' s Resolutions of any kind. Instead, I try to focus as much as possible on getting the best from each day and moment. Following this motto, last Friday morning, together with a group of friends, I decided to pay a visit at the STASI Prison situated in the former East side of the city. Tours, in German, were offered every hour, for one hour and a half. If you are too late or too early, you can buy a coffee or some pastry, or browse the shelves of a small bookstore offering thematic books mostly in German, but also in English and French (expensier). 

As we arrived late and needed to wait for 20 minutes for the next tour, I took the chance to buy two books I was interested in for a couple of weeks: Stasiland, short stories about living with the communist secret police, and Die Fluchttunnel von Berlin, about the secret tunnel across which many Berliners from the East succeeded - or not - to arrive in the free world. Both were included on my reading list for the next days.

There were also other advantages for being late: I watched a short movie English/German, about the history of the prison and admired the pictures from an exhibition dedicated to the Tunisian "revolution". As the English version of website proofs, the foundation managing the prison is monitoring the human rights all over the world, providing interesting information about individuals facing human rights abuses.

Memories of a "revolution" - the Tunisian version

Even though it was one day before the end of the year, visitors of all ages were present in a big number. The guide, a former inmate - as most part of the guides - , gave us a dynamic and interesting visit around this terrible place. 

A couple of "official information" about the location:

- The location was situated in the former Soviet Occupation Zone and was used for prison by the secret police - STASI - until 1990.

- Hohenschoenhausen was previously a canteen for the National Socialist People's Welfare Organisation. Under the Soviet occupation, it turned into a center of command for all the 17 prisons of the secret police of the GDR (at least, according to the official count). At the end of the war, almost 20,000 prisoners were transferred to other Soviet camps. The Soviet statistics mentioned in the presentation leaflet mentions that officially, 886 people died between July 1945 and October 1946, and unofficially, 3,000 detainees. The official STASI prison was created in 1951, but the Soviet presence continued till the end. Prisoners killed and hosted here were political dissidents, journalists, intellectuals, simple people who wanted to escape the country. 

- As in many other cases from former communist countries, the statistics should not be taken seriously. Many people disappeared from a day to another without never returning: many some escaped, others received a new identity, others were killed by the secret police. Unknown is also the percentage of "former" executives who were reintegrated by the new system, a situation occuring in both the East and the West.

- The last chief of the service, Erich Mielke, the NKVD-trained boss from 1957 to 1989, was never put on trial for the torture administered to the inmates and crimes. 

- At the end of the GDR, STASI counted on 91,000 full-time employees and 189,000 unofficial collaborators. In the official documents, STASI was considered "the shield and sword of the party".

The area used to be restricted to normal citizens of the DDR. On the road to the prison, I was fully transposed in the grey area of the communist cities.  In the last years, around the prison, nice, colorful and small villa were built.

A worried sky over the prison's yard.

The flowers are a reminded of the humanity that we are trying to forget sometimes.

The memorial stone in the courtyard.

The entrance in one of the building hosting cells and offices of communist employees.

One of the many doors that were closing the way to freedom for years.

The basement with the cells and terror rooms.

The small window from where the inmates were offered dirty food and insults.

The ambiance where people were used to spend dozen of years of humiliation. Many cells were repainted, deleting traces of authenticity. For some that never had direct contact with the communist way of being, many of those cells didn't say too much. Maybe more interraction and visual explanations were welcomed.

Another type of cell. Many inmates were kept in complete isolation for a long number of months.

Traces on the walls. I was curious to discover some original scratches or anything having to do with the life and memories of the former inmates (signs that I discovered, for example, in the Tempelhof bunker). Nothing like this here, unfortunately.

The long line of cells.

A torture room

Another torture room

The secret train. People were took and drove at unknown location. This was one of the phantom trains running the German rails. The explanation given is mentioning a "long" tradition of Germans transportting prisoners by train...Indeed...

The office of one of the mirriads of a STASI official. Deciding life and dead in a completely boring ambiance.

The green door used to annihilate the screams and cries of the inmates tortured in  otherwise boring -looking offices

The wallpapers were kept from the "old times". Lots of lights to push for asking various files, interrogations or any other evil-business.

The classical office furniture of the time. Many years after the fall of communist, this type of furniture was to be found in many governmental offices of post-communist institutions. Probably now are replaced by IKEA-style.

Officially, this Barkas car was used to transport food (scarce during communism). Unofficially, it transported prisoners to their prisons, many of them took off from the street. This was a well known Soviet style. Don't know if somebody escaped alive the various temptations to return to liberty.

The exhibition on STASI

As a special activity on the occasion of Germany's National Day, I visited (for free) the exhibition on STASI, the much feared GDR state security. As somebody born and breed in the wild Eastern Europe, I am familiar with the physical and psychological cruelty of the communist secret services and did read books and attended seminaries about the work of Gauck Commission, in charge with the documentation of the repression. 

This exhibition is open daily and hosted at an old building in Zimmerstrasse 90/91. Built in 1885, the building was a market hall, a concert hall, a collection camp for the deportation of Jewish forced labourers living in Berlin, the Berlin branch of the NSDAP publishing house and after the war the headquarters of some GDR publications. After 1961, it was part of the sensitive area from the vicinity of the Berlin Wall. Currently it is branded as the Educational Centre of the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic.

The base for the documentation is represented by the 1,111 km. of written documents which include 39 million file cards, 1,4 million photographs, 34,000 film and sound documents. 

Anyone could be a STASI victim...

Through images and historical references - some (but not all) bilingual German/English, we are introduced in the daily life of the East Berliner facing the pressures to collaborate from an early age and the complicate networks of official and unofficial informants. An exhaustive booklet in English is explaining in detail the ideas and historical episodes from each of the nine chapters of the exhibition. You will find out how the secret services overview almost every segment of the daily life: monitoring sporting contacts, the church, the youth organizations, the contacts with the foreigners, the conversations in the office, the recruitment methods. 

The exhibition also features six biographies as examples of how the activities of the secret police impacted on the lives of the people concerned. The six of them are of different ages, backgrounds and connections, but the common line is their harsh refusal to accept the communist realities and their security pandant.  

STASI was founded in 1950, as part of the huge system aimed to maintain in power the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). It was set up under the direct guidance of the Soviet secret police and obviously, in strict connection with the much feared KGB. The comprehensive aim of the STASI was the constant penetration of all areas of life of the GDR population: observing them, bugging their phones, spying on them, arresting and interrogating them. Its official staff was mainly recruited from the SED ranks, its youth organisation - the Free German Youth (FDJ), the police and the armed forces. The strong weapon was represented by the unofficial informants. By 1989, the State Security had about 189,000 unofficial informants - one for about every 90 GDR citizens. The equally feared and dispised director of STASI between 1957 and 1989 was Erich Mielke, who died at 92, in a Berlin nursing home. 

One of the main tasks of the Ministry of State Security was foreign espionage. By 1989, the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (HVA) responsible with the espionage in the West had a full-time staff of 4,600, plus 13,400 unofficial informants in the GDR and another 1,500 in West Germany. 

I fully recomend this exhibition to all those interested in the recent history and most especially the history of the East Germany. I would be curious, for example, to find out more about the social background of the STASI system, their education and credo. Where they were coming from? Lots of questions and the need to spend more time at the library.