Today we went to the STASI prison. It was used by the Soviets during their control of East Berlin. They used it for political prisoners including: those who tried to cross over into West Berlin/West Germany, and actors/writers who worked on works that went against the GDR. I had been to the prison in early September with my host family. Our tour then was in German. All the tour guides are former prisoners. The tour guide’s stories that my host family translated for me were incredible. I believe I already wrote an entry about that earlier, so I won’t repeat myself. Given all this I was really looking forward to having an English tour this time, so that I could hear firsthand what the prisoners went through.
When we got there, there was some sort of mix up, and they didn’t have any English tour guides available for us. Fortunately we had our student assistants along. They are German students who are studying American relations at Freie Universitat. Unfortunately there weren’t enough of them to cover all the groups. I just made sure I got in a group that would be translated to English for me. I give them credit; they did a marvelous job of translating! They aren’t trained translators, so I know it must have been hard.
This time my tour guide was imprisoned for trying to escape into West Berlin. He figured out there was a train that went from Moscow to Paris. With this train, he realized where there was a section of the route in East Berlin that was unsecured, so he could jump on and jump off again in West Berlin. He helped 19 students to freedom, a few each night. On the last night, he decided he would go. He got on the train, but do to all the jostling he fell off. He fell some 50 or more feet. He broke both his legs and one of his arms. He “walked,” as best you can with two broken legs, back to his parents house. He couldn’t go to the hospital, because he didn’t want anyone to find out what happened for fear he would be arrested. Rightfully so! He was arrested a few days later. His neighbors had reported it to the GDR. He was sentenced to 2 years in prison.
The STASI guards interrogated and tortured him to tell where he had tried to cross into West Berlin. He knew that other friends were going to cross in the next few days, so he wouldn’t tell them where he had boarded the train at. He said he was interrogated for 6 weeks. The entire time he did not give them any information and would not admit to anything for fear of being killed. All this time he was constantly tortured. They denied him medical treatment. He said he was the only prisoner not to receive medical attention. He needed medical attention to have his legs set back in place so they could heal. There was infection from the bandage he put on there before entering the prison. The guards wouldn’t give him anything for it. Our guard told him to urinate on himself to neutralize the bacteria. He said later after he was released he had to have his legs rebroken in 14 places. He then have to have 3 surgeries to repair his legs. It was horrifying hearing all this. He also said he was denied a shower for 2 months. He said no guards would come in his cell because it smelled so badly.
He said his crime was the worst, committing a crime against the state, trying to escape and helping others escape. He was treated the worst. He was kept in the most horrible of cells, in a concrete cell the entire time he was a prison, which was 2 years. On our tour we saw the newer building, which the prisoners built themselves. That building was much nicer, with a wooden bed and also a toilet and sink. His stories of the torture they put him through were unbearable. They had outdoor exercise time for 30 minutes each day. It literally was 30 minutes spent in an outdoor cell. The entire time they had to walk back and forth with their hands behind their back. He said his neck always hurt after that because he would crane his neck upward the whole time trying to see a bird or some creature, breathing in the fresh air. One night when it was below freezing, with snow on the ground, they left him out there the entire night. When they came to get him in the morning, he couldn’t walk. They literally had to carry him back to his cell. Can you even imagine?! He said the guards would tell him the next day there were plans to shoot him. The next morning he would wake up, but be too sick to eat any form of breakfast, not that it was good anyway. The entire day he would be leery, anxious, waiting for his death. It never came each time. Another time they brought his parents in and him in the same room. They all 3 assumed it was his “last supper” before he died. His mother had a heartache right there in that room. Fortunately, she recovered, but his father never recovered from that day and died shortly after. I can’t even fathom how human beings can be so cruel.
I heard him telling our student assistant that after his release, he got married and had a child. But he continued helping people escape into West Berlin. To avoid capture he had to constantly be on the move. The STASI took his child and raped his wife several times. He knew where his daughter was when she was 7 years old, but not after that. He said it wasn’t her fault and she shouldn’t have to know everything since she was happy now. His wife is in a mental institution suffering from the abuse the STASI did to her. We asked our tour guide how he is here, functioning, how he gets through each day. How is he “normal” again? He said it was all about your mental state of mind. He said you couldn’t let it get to you. You always had to have hope that you would be released, that you would see the outside world again. He said he would pretend he was an actor in a movie, and that it would end soon. It was only a scene. He said he once spent 8 days in a dark cell, where you could see nothing. He created stories in his mind to get through those 8 days.
He said one of the hardest parts was knowing that there were other people there, but never being able to talk to them. No prisoners ever saw any other prisoners. The STASI were very good at their jobs. And the employees really were convinced that these people were the enemy of the state. He said they developed a system to communicate with the inmates on either side of them. One knock was for A, two for B, etc. It was a lengthy process, but all they had was time. He said sometimes the guards would go in the cell next to you, communicating with you, trying to find out information. He said he never confessed to anything or admitted anything in his 2 years there. He also said they had one STASI interrogator for each prisoner. It was the only prison to have more interrogators than prisoners. The new wing that they built had more interrogation rooms that cells. I’m not sure what kind of tactics they all used, but they did something with radiation too. I believe they sat you in front of an X-Ray machine or something of the like. Several of the prisoners later died of cancer or leukemia. As if those poor prisoners hadn’t suffer enough. He credits himself surviving because he was muscular and was an athlete. He says he was a cocky young guy when he came in, which helped his survive. If he weren’t muscular, he says he would have died.
I was in utter and absolute shock the entire time our tour guide was talking. I know he explained how he got himself through the time in prison, but I just can’t imagine. Can you even imagine being alone in your head for that longs? I admire that man for all he has lived through. His wife, his daughter, all the torture, all the pain, and yet there he was talking about his experience every day. He said he does it to show how important democracy is. From now on, I will never miss an election day. I feel I owe it to all the men and women like our tour guide who suffered and died trying to escape into democracy. We really don’t realize how great we have it. Just like the concentration camps, it disgusts me beyond words how humanity is capable of such horrible things!
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