The hard stuff.

WARNING: a little bit depressing. But good to know.

So throughout my program we will have 4 school field trips. The very first field trip was a trip to the Chancellor's office. The second field trip was a few Fridays ago: a visit to the Stasi Prison Complex Memorial.

In the flurry of getting oriented, settling in, meeting friends and hanging out during the first few weeks, I was doing a lot less planning than I'm used to... also just a lot less looking ahead in general. So I knew we had this field trip coming up, when and where to meet, but I didn't look at where we were going. So as we're all walking over and then settling in to this assembly room to watch a introduction video, I still didn't have much of a thought in my head about what we were going to be seeing or learning about (The first field trip had been a bit dry). The video started and just minutes into it I knew it would be totally different than a visit to an empty government building. The Stasi Prison Complex was originally a building for camps but after the war it was transformed into a prison and gradually expanded with the addition of most buildings. This prison housed those who were even just suspected of being opponents of the GDR (German Democratic Republic).

After our tour guide showed us just one room, I was already finding it really difficult to go on and hear more about the physical and psychological torture that the prisoners endured. Up to 12 people were squeezed into one cell and there was no separation by age or sex. There were prisoners in their early teens as well as very elderly people cooped up in the same room sharing the same bench that was their bed. Women prisoners were sometimes raped by crazed male cellmates and had nowhere to run.

My mind was going a mile a minute as I was taking all of this in. Why did I even bring my camera? I don't want to be here, I don't want to hear about all of this, I definitely won't want to snap any photos to remember it… How can these tour guides stand having to retell such horrible stories everyday that they come to work? Are they desensitized after walking through these cells and recounting stories day after day?

But as my mind jumped all over the place, I thought about it and realized that as difficult as it all was to hear about, it's really important to. These are stories that have to be told and to ignore them because it makes me sad or uncomfortable would be an injustice to all of the people that were affected. So I kept listening and I started taking pictures. I went into every room the tour guide showed us. I looked it all up and down and I tried to retain as much of it as possible so I could know what had happened there and I could tell as many people that wanted to hear/read about it as possible.

When protective laws for prisoners were passed throughout Europe, the Stasi decided to switch from physical torture tactics to psychological torture. It was incredible when I really realized the ways in which psychology can be used for or against people. All prisoners of the complex were in single occupancy cells. None of them were to have any contact with anyone other than the interrogators and the prison guards. In the chance that they caught a brief glimpse of another inmate in the hallway when being led to an interrogation room, that brief glimpse was used against them. Example: a man is being led to an interrogation session and sees the back of another female prisoner turning the corner of the hallway. It's enough to see that it's another person, but not enough to tell if it was a person he knew. The interrogator would then ask the prisoner if he has heard from any family. At this point, the prisoner has been so mentally distressed and shares the fact that he saw a woman down the hall but couldn't make out who it was. The interrogator then tells him that the woman was actually his mother and they arrested her because the prisoner would not cooperate. Then the prisoner would be sent back to his cell, racked with guilt thinking he has put his mother in danger. A confession would be signed within the following day in the hopes that his mother would be released.

Near the end of the tour, another tour group squeezes past us and their guide is a jolly old man who greets our tour guide. After they pass, our tour guide tells us that he is a former prisoner who volunteers here as a tour guide. I was so shocked and also felt really… happy? It was so inspiring. If that man could experience so much horror and still return to this place to educate others, I could surely stand hearing about it – if not for me then out of respect for him.

Our tour guide also went on to speak about growing up in East Germany as a little girl. Everyone (really just about everyone) was a Stasi collaborator. As a young girl, she told her teacher once that her mother didn't always raise the GDR flag and as a result her mother was fired from her job and she herself was no longer allowed to attend school with the other children.

The history of this country is so recent, it's crazy. It's really interesting to be able to speak to people to grew up in East Germany before reunification. Our guide told us about how all of the Stasi members and collaborators are still around now. Those who worked for/in the prisons did a very good job of not leaving evidence so much of what was done was only recounted by prisoners – there's no actual evidence that could be used to condemn anyone. So these people are still out and about in society, still practicing as doctors, nurses, lawyers…

And then this gets me to these next thoughts… what can be said about this? Many of the people who worked for the Stasi police were either intimidated into doing so or really believed they were helping their country. They were brought to believe that all of these prisoners were enemies of the state; they were all opponents of the good government that was already in place and they needed to be stopped/punished.

If you've read this far, congratulations! I am really glad to share more details (I didn't want to put them all here because it really is very depressing) so just get at me. Or if you just want to have a conversation about any of it. Or something totally unrelated, too. =p

I promise not everything that I'm learning here in Berlin is this sad!

Until next time,


 
Fraulein Luu