Painful Memories of an East German Gulag I Thought I Was in a Nazi MovieMario Rllig can remember the day he arrived in East Berlins Hohenschnhausen jail like it was yesterday. And recalling the three months he spent there in 1. When we stepped out of the van there were 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 movie, Rllig, a 4. Berliner, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. His crime was trying to flee communist East Germany, where he had been harassed by the Ministry for State Security, the East German secret police force known as the Stasi, because he had refused to spy on friends he knew in West Berlin. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Rlligs legs still buckle at the memory of being locked up without knowing where he was, of body cavity searches while naked, of being threatened with indefinite incarceration. They said if I didnt talk about my friends they would arrest my parents too or take my sisters child from her. However one interprets these election results, it is certain that the open border scheme for Europe has suffered a reverse. Painful Memories of an East German Gulag I Thought I Was in a Nazi Movie Mario Rllig is still struggling to get over his time in a Stasi prison while his jailers. They said no one knows where you are, we can do what we want and no one will ever find out. Well just say you disappeared in the West. There were moments when I really thought I might not make it out alive. Plagued by Memories. Rllig still wakes up in a sweat at night wondering if hes broken prison rules by sleeping on his side. The sound of a two stroke car engine still makes his heart pound because it reminds him of the van that brought him to jail in a five hour odyssey that was aimed at disorientating him. Like many of the 2. East German jails during the 4. Rllig is suffering from a post traumatic stress disorder. A noise or a smell can trigger a memory and cause panic. Rllig cant work and has been in and out of psychiatric therapy and hospitals for the last decade. He had initially managed to suppress the trauma and was enjoying life in unified Germany until one day in 1. A chance encounter with one of his interrogators in a Berlin department store brought all the memories flooding back and overwhelmed him. Rllig tried to commit suicide with sleeping pills that night. He lost his job and has been fighting to overcome his past ever since. But Rllig keeps on returning to Hohenschnhausen, every month to give tours of the drab, concrete complex of 1. Stasi. Why does he come back For one, it gives him a sense of triumph. Greetings from the future Welcome to Postal Apocalypse, io9s admittedly sporadic mail column by me, editor Rob Bricken. This week Ive got a lot of. FOR THE FIRST TIME in modern history, a people whose identity is bound up with its race and religion have full control of every aspect of a nations infrastructure. GeHPwgLm6Y/hqdefault.jpg' alt='Gulag Full Movie Part 1' title='Gulag Full Movie Part 1' />A lot of the old Stasi guys still live in this neighborhood and this place is like a thorn in their side. I like the thought of that. Warped View of East Germany. But Rllig, one of 7. East Germans jailed for trying to escape to the West, has another reason for confronting his past each month He feels that many Germans have started to look back at East Germany also known as the German Democratic Republic, or GDR with an utterly unwarranted nostalgia that has become so widespread that theres a name for it Ostalgie. Rllig says the fundamental injustice of a system that locked its citizens behind a wall, spied on them and incarcerated anyone who criticized it or tried to escape is being masked by a growing perception that East Germany had a great welfare system, good schools and virtually zero unemployment appealing attributes at this time of economic crisis. I really cant stand this sentence you often hear these days Not everything was bad about the GDR. Im speechless when I hear people going on about the great child care and the great education system in East Germany. Its a lie. People were indoctrinated there like they were under the Nazis. Rllig said the Left Party, which emerged from the communist party that ruled East Germany to become a major electoral force in both eastern and western Germany, even sharing power in the city state government of Berlin, has been propagating a warped view of the past. Watch Series Dallas Season 3 here. Left Party officials including Bodo Ramelow, the regional party leader in the eastern state of Thuringia, are on record denying that East Germany was an unjust state. Rllig said Im not surprised many young people think East Germany was like the West, just without the freedom to travel and the hard currency. We ex prisoners have to keep hammering home to people that it was a dictatorship. Only when every school book contains that statement will I stop coming here to give tours. Former Stasi Officers Regaining Confidence. Rllig and other ex prisoners are becoming increasingly vocal because Germany is getting ready to mark the 2. Wall on November 9. But theyre also motivated by frustration at the mounting self confidence of former Stasi officers and prison guards. In recent years Stasi members have been writing books about the good old days and taking legal action against newspapers or former prisoners who name them publicly. They have been emboldened by the passage of a statute of limitations deadline in 2. Stasi officers can no longer be prosecuted for any crimes they committed apart from murder or manslaughter. Theyve all been coming out their holes and trivializing what they did, said Rllig. Sometimes they take part in tours at the prison. Theyre easy to recognize because they usually have little handbags round their wrists, probably containing tape recorders, said Rllig. Weve had people who suddenly shout out Youre lying It used to make me angry but these days I ask them to come to the front and talk about their human rights abuses. They usually respond by walking off or just shutting up.