Cindy Hurst's Blog - Posts Tagged "berlin-dancer"
Escaping from the East
During a conversation with Beate Vollack, a dancer/choreographer (and now dance director... congratulations!) who was born and raised in East Berlin, I asked her about the different ways people tried to flee the East. Her response was, "If you can imagine it, somebody tried it." People were quite creative. Some examples include hijacking a train, using a hot air balloon, jumping the wall, and using escape tunnels.
If you visit Berlin today, you can actually tour some of these escape tunnels.
http://www.smartertravel.com/photo-ga...
If you visit Berlin today, you can actually tour some of these escape tunnels.
http://www.smartertravel.com/photo-ga...
East Germany: Who Could You Trust?
In the German Democratic Republic, it was difficult to know who you could trust. It was not uncommon for children to turn in their parents, teachers to turn in students, and friends to turn in one another.
In his book entitled Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police, John O. Koehler writes, “To ensure that the people would become and remain submissive, East German communist leaders saturated their realm with more spies than had any other totalitarian government in recent history. The Soviet Union’s KGB employed about 480,000 full-time agents to oversee a nation of 280 million, which means there was one agent per 5,830 citizens. Using Wiesenthal’s figures for the Nazi Gestapo, there was one officer for 2,000 people. The ratio for the Stasi was one secret policeman per 166 East Germans. When the regular informers are added, these ratios become much higher: In the Stasi’s case, there would have been at least one spy watching every 66 citizens! When one adds in the estimated numbers of part-time snoops, the result is nothing short of monstrous: one informer per 6.5 citizens. It would not have been unreasonable to assume that at least one Stasi informer was present in any party of ten or twelve dinner guests.”
For this reason, the people of East Germany were extremely cautious in what they would divulge and to whom. You could never be too certain who might turn you in for an infraction as minor as having an antenna pointing toward the West so that you could pick up Western broadcast radio stations.
In his book entitled Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police, John O. Koehler writes, “To ensure that the people would become and remain submissive, East German communist leaders saturated their realm with more spies than had any other totalitarian government in recent history. The Soviet Union’s KGB employed about 480,000 full-time agents to oversee a nation of 280 million, which means there was one agent per 5,830 citizens. Using Wiesenthal’s figures for the Nazi Gestapo, there was one officer for 2,000 people. The ratio for the Stasi was one secret policeman per 166 East Germans. When the regular informers are added, these ratios become much higher: In the Stasi’s case, there would have been at least one spy watching every 66 citizens! When one adds in the estimated numbers of part-time snoops, the result is nothing short of monstrous: one informer per 6.5 citizens. It would not have been unreasonable to assume that at least one Stasi informer was present in any party of ten or twelve dinner guests.”
For this reason, the people of East Germany were extremely cautious in what they would divulge and to whom. You could never be too certain who might turn you in for an infraction as minor as having an antenna pointing toward the West so that you could pick up Western broadcast radio stations.
Two Days of Book Signing
Today the base exchange at Fort Leavenworth hosted a book signing for Berlin Dancer. A big hearty THANK YOU goes out to their manager, staff, and customers for top notch hospitality. The signing only lasted a couple of hours and, by the end, the store sold out of the book. I truly enjoyed meeting the customers and hearing their many stories! Berlin Dancer
