1C THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2016 CONTACT US Rebecca Sedlak | Weekend Editor rsedlak@dailyastorian.com WEEKEND BREAK FOLLOW US facebook.com/ DailyAstorian Sobering stories from behind the Berlin Wall Thinkstock image For national security, a culture of informants, betrayal and brutalism By STEVE FORRESTER The Daily Astorian hile waiting for a fl ight from Budapest to Prague, I browsed the airport’s newsstand. It was an array of magazines that you would fi nd in many other European terminals. But in one corner of the literary section, I spotted a quarterly with an arrest- ing, provocative cover. On the front of New Eastern Europe was a draw- ing of a man whose mouth was pad- locked. His eyes were framed by a set of glasses that could be used to blind him. The issue’s theme was Silencing Dissent: The Plight of Political Pris- oners in Eastern Europe. When I took it to the sales clerk, her look evinced disapproval. Hungary today is free of its Soviet overseers. But my airport moment reminded me how one may feel watched in a totalitarian society. Some 40 years ago, on a tour to Moscow and Leningrad, I watched an interchange between a Soviet customs offi cial and a traveler from New York. The Soviet in a military uniform seized a book they found inside of one of my fellow passenger’s luggage. Earlier I observed the Soviet gate- keepers seize posters from a young Russian athlete returning home. When we attempt to grasp another nation’s culture, there are two levels of understanding. One is to compre- hend it intellectually; the other is to feel it emotionally — to know what it looks like, feels like, smells like. To do that, you have to go there or know someone who’s been there. W The Wall We know there was a wall separat- ing East and West Germany. We know the wall was built to keep Germans inside the Russian sector — the Ger- man Democratic Republic, or GDR. We know the wall came down on Nov. 9, 1989, in one of the most dra- matic events of the late century. But few of us in the West grasp just what went on behind that wall. I’ve completed reading “Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall.” The book was recommended by a young guide whom my wife and I met in Dresden. The Australian author, Anna Funder, researched her book by advertising for former agents of the East German secret police, the Stasi, to tell their stories. Funder conveys the emotional intelligence behind the East German secret police and East Germany’s cul- ture of informants, betrayal and bru- talism, off which the Stasi fed. With its vast network of employees and informants, the Stasi constituted what Funder calls the most extensive sur- W riter’s N otebook veillance society in world history — beyond the scope of Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia. Frau Paul The ingredients of “Stasiland” are a set of encounters with former Stasi agents and their victims. The most disturbing chapter is titled “Frau Paul.” Sigrid Paul’s troubles began when her child was born with a rup- tured digestive tract. From infancy to 5, the boy lived inside a West German hospital while his mother lived in the East. The Stasi recognized that this woman’s distress would lead her to an attempted escape. Frau Paul faced a classic dilemma between the option of informing on someone in exchange for free access to her son or being imprisoned. She fell into the Stasi’s trap. The former prisoner takes Anna Funder to the Hohenschonhausen prison of East Berlin, where politi- cal prisoners like her were held. Now empty, it is a nondescript building, but with its instru- ments of degrada- tion intact. Frau Paul has Funder sit inside a small cell within the paddy wagon in which she was trans- Anna Funder ported. She shows Funder the small stools on which she sat in interroga- tion rooms. She describes the revolt- ing smells that accompanied the tasks forced on her. Frau Paul is a free woman. But it is not a story with a happy end- ing. There are no happy endings in Funder’s book, except for a 16-year- old girl whom Funder encounters in a park. The girl was 6 when the Wall fell. At a time when racial purity par- ties are gaining ground in France and Germany and with a new American president who thinks he can do busi- ness with a former KGB agent, this book is sobering. Clearly written, “Stasiland” describes a culture that is somewhat similar to what Blaine Harden paints in “Escape From Camp 14” — a book about North Korea’s unfathomable culture of informants and mass impris- onment or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Deniso- vich,” about Stalin’s Gulag. Steve Forrester is the former edi- tor and publisher of The Daily Asto- rian. He is president of the EO Media Group board of directors. Sue Ream/Creative Commons People atop the Berlin Wall near the Brandenburg Gate on Nov. 9 1989. The text on the sign “Achtung! Sie verlassen jetzt West-Berlin” (“Notice! You are now leaving West Berlin”) has been modified with an additional text “Wie denn?” (“How?”). East Germany’s surveillance culture was more extensive than Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia. An American will fi nd this book about the East German secret police sobering.