Staci prison Berlin

We went to visit Berlin Hohenschönhausen Staci prison, which used to be a GDR (German “Democratic” Republic) detention center,used during the cold war. Now turned into a museum, was a jail for people they found guilty of treason against the Soviet government.

The cold war was a time of fear of nuclear war between the western bloc and the eastern bloc. That means mainly between France, the UK and the US versus the Soviet union, it was named like this by Winston Churchill.

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The GDR would unofficially “employ” people by threats to work for them as spies/informers to tell them if any of their friends and/or family were suspicious of wanting to leave the Soviet union or uprising against it. Then Staci officers knew who to bring in by searching the homes of people the informers would tell them, even if what they said wasn't something worth arresting for example a person was imprisoned because they wrote in their diary “I wish I could go to Hamburg” and hamburg was outside of the GDR.

Staci officers brought people to these prisons in large vans with no windows on the back, so the suspects couldn't know where the prison was. There were two levels. One was underground and one above ground.

The one underground one looked a lot like a bunker, and was smaller than it would seem to be, but it was made to look bigger and when people would talk it would echo more so it seemed larger. Each cell would be around the size of a small bedroom and they would put up to 20 people in the cells, and they had one bucket for everyone to poop and/or pee.

After a while of staying there, or just directly after arriving, prisoners would be sent to interrogation.

Afterwards, they would be sent to a prison cell above ground, where they would be alone in a very small cell with one bed, a sink and toilet. They would be in those cells for around 6 months. You could only sleep in a specific position,the lights would turn on every 15-25 minutes, you could no exercise or read unless if “behaved well” officers could give you a copy of Karl Marx “The communist manifesto” wich all where metal torture. There were two ways to get out one was serving your sentence but they could always increment your time in jail OR be “sold” to West Germany for thousands of dollars (like 15k).

After the cold war ended, the Staci files were revealed for a short amount of time. After around a year they closed the archives and made them classified because they had the fear that people would go harm and possibly murder the people who imprisoned and tortured them.

I think that this was Horrible,I’m glad this is over for Germans. I hope this never happens again and stops happening in other countries.