Still struggling to get over the Wall
David Crossland, Foreign Correspondent
April 13. 2009 8:30AM UAE
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20...762/1013/SPORT
BERLIN // The Berlin Wall fell almost 20 years ago, but Mario Röllig, who was pursued and jailed by the East German secret police in the 1980s, is still hounded by his past.
The 41-year-old Berliner still wakes up in a sweat at night worried that he has broken prison rules by sleeping on his side.
The sound of a two-stroke car engine passing in the street still makes his heart race because it reminds him of the van that took him to jail in 1987.
Some of the people who imprisoned and interrogated Mr Röllig are living quiet, prosperous lives in Berlin and every time he walks out of his front door, he faces the possibility of a chance encounter with one of his tormentors.
“It’ll be our turn again one day! You’ll be among the first we lock up again!” a retired officer from the East German ministry for state security, the secret police known as Stasi, called over his garden fence as Mr Röllig walked by recently.
“You’ll be long dead by then,” came Mr Röllig’s answer.
Mr Röllig is receiving psychiatric counselling for a post-traumatic stress disorder from the three months and three days he spent in the notorious Hohenschönhausen Stasi prison in north-eastern Berlin, a dismal complex of flaking concrete buildings surrounded by watchtowers.
His crime was trying to escape to the West.
It was a common offence: of the 250,000 political prisoners locked up during East Germany’s 41-year communist dictatorship, 72,000 were held because they were caught attempting to flee.
He is unfit for work but gives monthly tours of the jail, now a museum, together with 31 other former prisoners. His easy eloquence and well-to-do appearance with a camel hair coat and designer spectacles mask the turmoil inside.
Mr Röllig tried to commit suicide in 1999 after he came across one of his interrogators in a department store.
Sometimes his legs buckle at the memory of being locked up without knowing where he was, of body cavity searches while naked, of being screamed at by guards and threatened with indefinite incarceration.
As Germany gears up to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall on Nov 9, Mr Röllig and fellow former prisoners are warning that the country has not yet come to terms with the crimes of the East German regime, and that many people are looking back at that era with utterly misguided nostalgia.
“I’m speechless when I hear people going on about the great childcare and education system in East Germany. It’s a bald-faced lie. People were indoctrinated like they were under the Nazis,” Mr Röllig said.
“One day I’ll stop coming back here to give tours, but that day won’t come until every school book says East Germany was a dictatorship.”
The Stasi had 91,000 employees and established a network of about 189,000 civilian informants to spy on neighbours, co-workers and even relatives.
Mr Röllig initially fell foul of the East German authorities because he refused to spy on friends from West Berlin.
The Stasi had tried to recruit him because he came into contact with West Berliners while working in the restaurant of East Berlin’s Schönefeld airport.
“The Stasi wanted me to inform on them,” Mr Röllig said.
“They offered me a nice flat and said they could bump me to the front of the 15-year waiting list for a Trabant car. But I didn’t want to betray my friends.” His decision to say “no” was courageous. People who refused to co-operate knew they were risking their livelihoods and even their freedom.
Mr Röllig soon felt the consequences. Two Stasi men started following him, and agents tried to get him sacked by framing him for theft. They planted his colleagues’ shoes in his locker at work.
Mr Röllig was finally transferred to a job washing dishes. Frustrated by the harassment and by the complete absence of job prospects, he decided to defect.
He travelled to Hungary and tried to get to the West from there by crossing the poorly guarded border with Yugoslavia. But he was caught and flown back to East Berlin.
“They put us in a delivery van with cages inside and drove us around for five hours to disorientate us. When we arrived we were met by men in riding boots with riding breeches and rubber truncheons screaming at us to remove our belts and shoelaces. I thought I was in a Nazi film.”
Like thousands of other prisoners incarcerated in Hohenschönhausen for trying to get to the West or criticising the regime, Mr Röllig was interrogated for days in good cop/bad cop routines and told he faced charges of treason, endangering world peace and provoking a nuclear war.
“They said, ‘no one knows where you are, we can do what we want. We’ll just say you disappeared in the West’.
“The worst thing was the loneliness and not knowing what would happen next. There were moments when I thought I might not make it out alive.”
Prisoners were not allowed to touch their bed until 10pm when the lights were turned out. During the night they had to lie on their backs at all times. “The guards would check throughout the night. If you were on your side they would kick the door with their boots and scream at you.”
Hohenschönhausen’s 103 cells and 120 interrogation rooms included two padded cells where problem prisoners would be kept for up to 13 days in total darkness. In some cases their sobbing was recorded and played to relatives.
Mr Röllig was released after three months and allowed to defect in 1988 under a prisoner sale arrangement with West Germany that the regime used to earn hard currency.
He enjoyed his new-found freedom, and stayed in the West after the fall of the Wall, travelling and finding good jobs until his life was changed by an incident in 1999, when he was a sales assistant in Kadewe, Berlin’s flagship department store. He suddenly realised a customer he was selling €750 (Dh3,600) worth of cigars to was one of his interrogators.
“I started shaking and thought what do I do now? Do I smash his face in? Then I thought, he’s not that old, maybe we can talk about this, maybe he’ll apologise.
“I told him who I was and said let’s shake hands and say you’re sorry. He looked baffled and then gave me this look of hatred. He said: ‘What do you want from me? What am I supposed to apologise for? You’re a criminal!’
“I wanted to hurl myself over the counter at him but colleagues held me back and I couldn’t stop screaming. He just walked off. That night I tried to kill myself with sleeping pills because I thought now they’ve found me.”
A friend found Mr Röllig in time. He was referred to a psychiatric institution, lost his job and has been in counselling ever since. Coming back to prison to tell school groups about the East German dictatorship gives him a feeling of triumph, he said. “I can live without hatred today. The former Stasi guys can’t.”
But he, like thousands of others persecuted by the regime, is worried about the growing popularity of the Left Party, which emerged from the communist party that ruled East Germany and which has many former state officials, including Stasi employees, as members.
He also feels that former political prisoners are not getting the recognition they deserve while former Stasi officers have become increasingly brazen in recent years, forming societies, writing books about the good old days and even taking legal action against newspapers or former prisoners who name them publicly.
“They’ve all been coming out of their holes and trivialising what they did,” Mr Röllig said. “They should be growing roses or looking after their grandchildren for all I care, but they need to shut up.”
He is campaigning for an honorary pension for everyone who was persecuted in East Germany, and for easier access to compensation for health problems resulting from imprisonment. He also wants a large memorial in the heart of Berlin dedicated to the victims of communist dictatorship.
In the meantime, Mr Röllig is enjoying some success in silencing his captors. Last month he won a libel case against a former Stasi officer who had called him a notorious liar.
“He was ordered to pay me €2,772 (Dh13,380) plus six months’ interest. I’m going to use that money to help fulfil a dream – a cruise to New York on Queen Mary II. I’ll send him a postcard,” Mr Röllig said with a smile.
dcrossland@thenational.ae
David Crossland, Foreign Correspondent
April 13. 2009 8:30AM UAE
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20...762/1013/SPORT
BERLIN // The Berlin Wall fell almost 20 years ago, but Mario Röllig, who was pursued and jailed by the East German secret police in the 1980s, is still hounded by his past.
The 41-year-old Berliner still wakes up in a sweat at night worried that he has broken prison rules by sleeping on his side.
The sound of a two-stroke car engine passing in the street still makes his heart race because it reminds him of the van that took him to jail in 1987.
Some of the people who imprisoned and interrogated Mr Röllig are living quiet, prosperous lives in Berlin and every time he walks out of his front door, he faces the possibility of a chance encounter with one of his tormentors.
“It’ll be our turn again one day! You’ll be among the first we lock up again!” a retired officer from the East German ministry for state security, the secret police known as Stasi, called over his garden fence as Mr Röllig walked by recently.
“You’ll be long dead by then,” came Mr Röllig’s answer.
Mr Röllig is receiving psychiatric counselling for a post-traumatic stress disorder from the three months and three days he spent in the notorious Hohenschönhausen Stasi prison in north-eastern Berlin, a dismal complex of flaking concrete buildings surrounded by watchtowers.
His crime was trying to escape to the West.
It was a common offence: of the 250,000 political prisoners locked up during East Germany’s 41-year communist dictatorship, 72,000 were held because they were caught attempting to flee.
He is unfit for work but gives monthly tours of the jail, now a museum, together with 31 other former prisoners. His easy eloquence and well-to-do appearance with a camel hair coat and designer spectacles mask the turmoil inside.
Mr Röllig tried to commit suicide in 1999 after he came across one of his interrogators in a department store.
Sometimes his legs buckle at the memory of being locked up without knowing where he was, of body cavity searches while naked, of being screamed at by guards and threatened with indefinite incarceration.
As Germany gears up to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall on Nov 9, Mr Röllig and fellow former prisoners are warning that the country has not yet come to terms with the crimes of the East German regime, and that many people are looking back at that era with utterly misguided nostalgia.
“I’m speechless when I hear people going on about the great childcare and education system in East Germany. It’s a bald-faced lie. People were indoctrinated like they were under the Nazis,” Mr Röllig said.
“One day I’ll stop coming back here to give tours, but that day won’t come until every school book says East Germany was a dictatorship.”
The Stasi had 91,000 employees and established a network of about 189,000 civilian informants to spy on neighbours, co-workers and even relatives.
Mr Röllig initially fell foul of the East German authorities because he refused to spy on friends from West Berlin.
The Stasi had tried to recruit him because he came into contact with West Berliners while working in the restaurant of East Berlin’s Schönefeld airport.
“The Stasi wanted me to inform on them,” Mr Röllig said.
“They offered me a nice flat and said they could bump me to the front of the 15-year waiting list for a Trabant car. But I didn’t want to betray my friends.” His decision to say “no” was courageous. People who refused to co-operate knew they were risking their livelihoods and even their freedom.
Mr Röllig soon felt the consequences. Two Stasi men started following him, and agents tried to get him sacked by framing him for theft. They planted his colleagues’ shoes in his locker at work.
Mr Röllig was finally transferred to a job washing dishes. Frustrated by the harassment and by the complete absence of job prospects, he decided to defect.
He travelled to Hungary and tried to get to the West from there by crossing the poorly guarded border with Yugoslavia. But he was caught and flown back to East Berlin.
“They put us in a delivery van with cages inside and drove us around for five hours to disorientate us. When we arrived we were met by men in riding boots with riding breeches and rubber truncheons screaming at us to remove our belts and shoelaces. I thought I was in a Nazi film.”
Like thousands of other prisoners incarcerated in Hohenschönhausen for trying to get to the West or criticising the regime, Mr Röllig was interrogated for days in good cop/bad cop routines and told he faced charges of treason, endangering world peace and provoking a nuclear war.
“They said, ‘no one knows where you are, we can do what we want. We’ll just say you disappeared in the West’.
“The worst thing was the loneliness and not knowing what would happen next. There were moments when I thought I might not make it out alive.”
Prisoners were not allowed to touch their bed until 10pm when the lights were turned out. During the night they had to lie on their backs at all times. “The guards would check throughout the night. If you were on your side they would kick the door with their boots and scream at you.”
Hohenschönhausen’s 103 cells and 120 interrogation rooms included two padded cells where problem prisoners would be kept for up to 13 days in total darkness. In some cases their sobbing was recorded and played to relatives.
Mr Röllig was released after three months and allowed to defect in 1988 under a prisoner sale arrangement with West Germany that the regime used to earn hard currency.
He enjoyed his new-found freedom, and stayed in the West after the fall of the Wall, travelling and finding good jobs until his life was changed by an incident in 1999, when he was a sales assistant in Kadewe, Berlin’s flagship department store. He suddenly realised a customer he was selling €750 (Dh3,600) worth of cigars to was one of his interrogators.
“I started shaking and thought what do I do now? Do I smash his face in? Then I thought, he’s not that old, maybe we can talk about this, maybe he’ll apologise.
“I told him who I was and said let’s shake hands and say you’re sorry. He looked baffled and then gave me this look of hatred. He said: ‘What do you want from me? What am I supposed to apologise for? You’re a criminal!’
“I wanted to hurl myself over the counter at him but colleagues held me back and I couldn’t stop screaming. He just walked off. That night I tried to kill myself with sleeping pills because I thought now they’ve found me.”
A friend found Mr Röllig in time. He was referred to a psychiatric institution, lost his job and has been in counselling ever since. Coming back to prison to tell school groups about the East German dictatorship gives him a feeling of triumph, he said. “I can live without hatred today. The former Stasi guys can’t.”
But he, like thousands of others persecuted by the regime, is worried about the growing popularity of the Left Party, which emerged from the communist party that ruled East Germany and which has many former state officials, including Stasi employees, as members.
He also feels that former political prisoners are not getting the recognition they deserve while former Stasi officers have become increasingly brazen in recent years, forming societies, writing books about the good old days and even taking legal action against newspapers or former prisoners who name them publicly.
“They’ve all been coming out of their holes and trivialising what they did,” Mr Röllig said. “They should be growing roses or looking after their grandchildren for all I care, but they need to shut up.”
He is campaigning for an honorary pension for everyone who was persecuted in East Germany, and for easier access to compensation for health problems resulting from imprisonment. He also wants a large memorial in the heart of Berlin dedicated to the victims of communist dictatorship.
In the meantime, Mr Röllig is enjoying some success in silencing his captors. Last month he won a libel case against a former Stasi officer who had called him a notorious liar.
“He was ordered to pay me €2,772 (Dh13,380) plus six months’ interest. I’m going to use that money to help fulfil a dream – a cruise to New York on Queen Mary II. I’ll send him a postcard,” Mr Röllig said with a smile.
dcrossland@thenational.ae
An interesting story just the same. Even thought the settlement he received is not a huge sum, perhaps he should use that money to try to relocate if only for the sake of his health and sanity.
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