Tens of thousands of people were locked up and even tortured in this former Stasi prison, now a museum. Euromaxx reporter Meggin Leigh went for a visit.
00:06When I enter such a cell, the loneliness and time seem to stand still.
00:12The more that time goes by, the more distance I gain from this place, from the perpetrators,
00:18and of course from the loneliness and these negative feelings.
00:25I'm here in the former Stasi prison in Hohenschönhausen in Berlin.
00:33Now a museum and memorial site, this prison complex was once a key part of East Germany's secret service agency, the Stasi.
00:41During the Cold War, the Stasi was notorious for its oppressive control over citizens, holding thousands of political prisoners.
00:49If these walls could talk, they would tell you harrowing stories of oppression and isolation.
00:56Mario Rulig was a prisoner here for three months in 1987.
01:00His time here may have been relatively short, but the scars remain until today.
01:06On July 3, 1987, on a hot summer day, I was pushed into this cell.
01:14The first shock was that there wasn't really a window.
01:17I couldn't look outside.
01:18I was isolated.
01:19I never found out where I was.
01:21Many years later, when I accessed the files of the East German State Security Service, I learned I was in Hohenschönhausen.
01:28Mario tried to flee from East Germany to the former Yugoslavia via Hungary.
01:34He was arrested by Hungarian border police and sent back to East Berlin, where his actions were deemed criminal by the state.
01:41From 1951 to 1989, this prison held some 11,000 people considered hostile to the communist GDR.
01:50And that included West Berliners, even before the Berlin Wall was built.
01:55We are walking now among the interrogation rooms.
01:59There are dozens of them.
02:01What was it like to be interrogated here?
02:04The interrogations took place from Monday to Friday, usually lasting five to eight hours.
02:11Sometimes I wasn't called at all, sometimes only for an hour.
02:14There was one officer who only shouted and insulted,
02:18and another who was very friendly, chosen for his psychological skills for the interrogations.
02:23He looked like my friend from the West, which made him much worse because I would have gone for a beer with him rather than being interrogated by him.
02:30The Strazi prison in Hohenschönhausen employed several methods to keep prisoners separated and isolated.
02:37Small soundproof cells and interrogation rooms made it difficult for prisoners to see or communicate with each other.
02:44Guards followed strict protocols to ensure prisoners did not interact.
02:51For example, prisoners were often moved individually through the building using red and green lights to indicate when the corridor was free.
02:59Mario was released from prison in September of 1987 under a West German program that paid 90,000 Deutschmarks for his freedom.
03:09Years later, long after the Berlin Wall fell, he had a bitter encounter with one of his former Stasi officers at a Berlin department store.
03:17This experience eventually led him to give tours and speak publicly about his past, highlighting that many former Stasi officers walk freely, showing little regret for their past actions.
03:32For young people, the GDR is as distant as the Roman Empire historically.
03:40And the longer the GDR is gone, the second German dictatorship, the more positively it is sometimes viewed.
03:46But I can show you what a dictatorship does, how it tortures people, and what it leaves behind.
03:51No one who was imprisoned here in this prison came out the same person as when they went in.
04:02I've been to other prison museums, such as Alcatraz in San Francisco, but I must say that nothing leaves you with a feeling of such oppression and isolation as this Stasi prison.
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