After the Berlin Wall was built in most inmates were those who had attempted to escape or leave East Germany, but also writers and civil rights activists. Made to appear outwardly as fish or vegetable delivery vans, these vehicles had five tiny windowless cells, which meant inmates had no idea where they had been taken.
The Stasi succeeded in pressuring 90 percent of inmates to make damning statements in their first interrogation. In prison every inmate was addressed not by name but by their cell number. To socially ostracize them they were often put into isolation cells for months, where even talking to the guards was forbidden.
The only human contact was therefore with the interrogator - an insidious way to make inmates talk. Up to three inmates were housed in the different sized cells. They were unable to see anything through the cell windows, which were made of glass blocks.
A mirror and hot water was only made available as of During the day inmates were not allowed to lie on their cots, at night they had to assume the same position: lying on their backs, facing the door with their hands on top of the blanket. Inmates found being permanently watched in their cells through the spy hole in the door very stressful.
Guards would keep a check on the prisoners even when they were washing or using the toilet. At night the lights would be switched on every ten to twelve minutes. Heating and light could only be controlled from outside the cells.
This all served to make the inmates feel utterly powerless. A wire was mounted along the walls of the cell block corridor. When a prisoner was taken from his cell to be interrogated, the guards pulled the wire, which made red warning lights light up. Any inmate in the corridor would then have to face the wall immediately. This was intended to prevent prisoners encountering one another.
The cell block and the interrogation rooms where separated by barred doors. To this day the linoleum floor still smells of the disinfectant used in East Germany. All interrogation rooms were equipped with double padded doors, behind which inmates where subjected to hours of questioning over several months. Prisoners were expected to incriminate themselves so that they could be sentenced. Stasi police used elaborate psychological interrogation methods.
Initially they would threaten the inmate with long prison terms or the arrest of their family members. Panic and uncertainty were intended to wear them down. Those who cooperated were promised an easing of detention conditions: medical attention, a book, or half an hour of yard exercise. In these cell-like compounds inmates could see the sky and breathe some fresh air.
They themselves called the yards "tiger cages. An armed guard was always on patrol above the wire mesh. The fall of the Berlin Wall put an end to the Stasi remand center. But only few interrogators were ever made accountable for what had happened behind these walls, and none were sent to jail. People were also protesting in other East European countries, especially Poland and Hungary.
On October 7, , the communist regime celebrated the founding of the GDR for the very last time: 40 years of the German Democratic Republic. Just one month later, on November 9, the Berlin Wall fell. Millions of Germans, in both the East and the West, were ecstatic. Still, that was not the death knell for the GDR; that would not come for another year, on October 3, , when Germany was reunified.
Meanwhile, the relatively small country, which had only 17 million residents before it was dissolved, has spent the past 29 years as part of the larger Federal Republic of Germany, today home to 83 million people. Still, no one would think of describing the whole as a unified fatherland. The economy in the west is far stronger than in the east. Workers earn more in the west and very few companies have managers from the east.
Probably the best known Cold War border crossing was located in the center of Berlin. In this was where the American and Russian sectors met. The crossing remained after the Berlin Wall was built in , and then served for foreigners to cross between East and West Berlin.
Today a private museum depicts the city's division and escape stories - those that succeeded and those that failed. After tensions mounted between the Soviet Union on the one side, and the United States, Great Britain, and France on the other, the Western powers combined their zones and allowed the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany. Following the German surrender to the Allied powers on May 8, , Germany was occupied and divided into four zones. In , the United States and Great Britain merged their zones.
In response to the improvement of relations between the two German governments, representatives of the United States and GDR negotiated arrangements for U.
Despite this step taken to deal with the reality of the German situation, the United States continued until German reunification in to view the FRG as the sole legitimate successor government of the historical German state and a future reunified Germany. Facebook Young Pioneer Tours. Coup in Sudan — Travel Update — Travel corridor between Cambodia and Thailand to open.
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