Berlin Wall and Stasi Prison

The first thing that people think of when they hear of Berlin is the Berlin Wall, that separated East and West Berlin. The construction of the wall started Sunday in August in 1961. The tour guide stated that early Sunday morning the GDR (German Democratic Republic) started laying down countless strands of barbwire in the streets. The wall obviously could not be completed in a day and they did not want anyone escaping into West Berlin so the GDR improvised on the wall by utilizing the houses and other buildings as part of the wall. The GDR came into peoples homes and threw them out and boarded up the windows and doors and made command posts out of them. The tour guide said that as the soldiers were going from house to house people were jumping out of top story windows and doing whatever they could to be in West Berlin. It must have been horrific for everyone involved. Another interesting fact about the wall was that the GDR soldiers were always paired up in teams of two or more. This due to the fact that several soldiers wanted to defect themselves. Below is one of the most famous pictures of a German solider defecting from East to West Berlin.

Soon after the barbwire was put up and the wall was secure, the GDR started putting up a huge concrete wall all around East Berlin. Several hundred people died throughout the almost thirty years that the wall was up. Below are some pictures from the memorial of the Berlin Wall.

Standing in West Berlin and the grassy area was East Berlin

Opposite view where I was standing in East Berlin and looking at West Berlin. You can see that all the buildings are colorful and look different. This was only true in West Berlin and East Berlin all the houses and buildings were the color gray and all looked the same. On the West side the wall was covered in graffiti and on the East all you could see was the concrete wall.

Here where I am standing there were several underground tunnels that led to the West Berlin. The ground was made of thick clay so there were several tunnels. Here is a picture of one.

Here are some more pictures of the Berlin Wall.

The Berlin Wall is down now but throughout Berlin on the sidewalks and through the streets are sets of cobblestone that show where the wall once stood. Along one of the main streets the famous parts of the Berlin Wall still stand. After the wall was torn down, the government allowed about and 8 km stretch to be painted by different artists depicting the tragedies that happened behind that wall. Here are some of the most famous pics.

As many people defected, or thought about defecting, from East to West Germany the Ministry for State Security or the "Stasi" were there to control. The Stasi set up one of the toughest most brutal prisons in Berlin to detain conspirators and defectors. If a person was caught they would be interrogated until they gave names to the Stasi. If a son of a family got caught trying to cross over into West Berlin, the entire family was considered a threat and they would bring the entire family to the prison. The fate of thousands fell victim to political persecution in the former East Germany although many amongst the incarcerated had committed no crime. Here is a look at the most brutal prison by the secret police, Stasi.

Once inside the Stasi prison the Stasi police used any means necessary to get people to talk. They used techniques like the Chinese water torture and putting people into an isolated room that was so small the person was forced to stand. They did many inhumane forms of punishment to get people to talk and after several years of this the prison came under different control and instead of physical punishments they went with the psychological torture. Interrogation rooms were built and prisoners were assigned to one interrogator. 

The prison was closed down in 1989 and the tours are guided by ex-prisoners. The tour guide said that there was a doctor there at the prison that used to give injections of something that would make the prisoners talk. The guide stated that that particular doctor is still practicing medicine close to the prison. If that is true, it makes me wonder who his patients are...


Something that I have noticed:


I have noticed some striking similarities between the United States and Germany. In the states there is a huge difference between people on the East and West Coasts. Germany is similar except that it is North and South Germany. Berlin feels like East Coast US, and Munich reminds me of West Coast US. The types of personalities are strikingly similar.