Rough Living in East Berlin

In the classic 1996 film "The Rock," Former covert SAS soldier John Mason (masterfully portrayed by Sean Connery) has been imprisoned for several decades and reacts with surprise upon learning that tourists have been taken hostage on Alcatraz Island - "The Rock has become a tourist attraction?"  From time to time a visitor may get the same feel when visiting places now available to visitors in what was formerly East Berlin.  For example, the bunkers.

The East Germans and Soviets had come up with contingency plans in case of World War III.  Part of these plans involved underground bunkers.  The bunkers have been sold to private interests and are no longer operative, if they ever would have been.  The bunkers designed to protect the citizens of East Berlin have enough food, space and supplies for two to three thousand people to wait out there for anywhere between 48 hours and 2 weeks.  Unfortunately, the city held several hundred thousand people who would may have needed to hold out for months or years in the case of world war three, so....

The East Germans planned to used the subway system as a bunker.  Prior to the division of the city into East and West, a subway system had been in use.  As you might imagine, a subway running from east to west would be a huge inconvenience for the East Germans (who did not want anyone going west).  This subway was actually even worse than that for them because it started in the west, traveled through the east and then returned to the west.  The East Germans decided to close off the stations in East Berlin, but still allowed the train to run through them, providing service to the West Germans.  The East Germans then fortified some of the "ghost stations" with stored supplies and prepared to use them as bunkers.  Ultimately, this would have been tough since each station typically had only one air intake and one air filter.  If the war on the surface were to destroy or disable the air intake, there would be no oxygen and the airtight bunker would quickly become a tomb.

Nicknamed "Stalin's Grass"

 If you were a resident of East Berlin and were looking to make a move to the west, you might try to take advantage of the fact that the subway was still open.  Unfortunately, the Stasi (the East German secret police) were always trying to stop you.  If you were able to plan your escape without having an informer turn you in and were able to slip past the guards in the ghost stations of the subway, you had a chance to run along the tracks until you reached a western station or a train and could get away.  When the Stasi figured out that people were doing this, it installed the nefarious device pictured above.  While running between the tracks of the subway through a dark tunnel, imagine the horror when you or one of your companions step on a sharp spike sticking up from the ground.

Other popular methods for escaping from East to West Berlin included crawling through the sewer system or digging a subterranean tunnel.  There are 68 known tunnels or partial tunnels, most of which were started from the west and borrowed into the east.  Students and former East Berlin residents were often in charge of these daring attempts and some were successful.  It is not known exactly how many were successful and how many were not.  However, if you were not successful, you could be shot or sent to prison.

One of the worst prisons in East Berlin was the Hohenschoenhausen Prison.  This prison is located within the city and was one of the places that the Stasi took prisoners during the Cold War.  Its history goes back even further, as it was originally used by the Nazis and then by the occupying forces of the Soviets after World War II.

This prison was designed to break the spirit of the prisoners, as a confession (valid or fabricated) was the preferred way to resolve a case under all three entities that used it.  The prison used both physical and psychological methods to break the resolve of its inmates.  The photo above shows a typical cell in the prison.  Under normal conditions this cell would house between 5 and 12 inmates.  What is missing from the cell?  A toilet (although inmates report that a bucket was provided).  Ventilation.  A window.  After a few days (or longer) living like this, the inmates were ready for interrogation.

Come in, have a seat.

Many of the inmates who were housed here under East German rule are still alive and actually volunteer to give tours of the prison.  Many report that they were eager for their interrogation because most had committed no crime and thought that they could explain themselves and be released.  In fact, this was often not the goal of the interrogation.  In these cases, the interrogators had already decided what the confession should include and would use whatever methods they felt necessary to convince the prisoner to acquiesce.  Rather than beat the confession OUT of the prisoner, the interrogators first had to beat the confession IN to the prisoner.

If that did not work, the prison was equipped with "enhanced interrogation" equipment.

The photo above shows the water torture room.  The inmate would be placed so that he was face down, immobilized and his neck was between the two buckets.  Then the top bucket would be tipped so that a constant drip of water hit the inmate on the back of his neck.  Then the room was locked for a few hours or days.  According to researchers on the subject, after a few thousands drops, the body starts to feel pain with each drop, even though it is just water.

If the inmate was still not on board with the confession, he or she (this was a co-ed prison) would be placed in solitary confinement.  One place to do this was in the padded rooms in the basement.  The rooms were round and the doors had no handles.  The window was closed (it was only opened after the inmate was removed in order to air out the room) and the light bulb was constantly left on.  After a few hours, this had the effect of leaving the inmate disoriented as to time and space.  It also was a type of sensory deprivation, as the "pads" on the walls were not there to protect the prisoner, but to isolate him or her from any noises. 

But now, to the surprise of the East Germans and John Mason, all of these sights are tourist attractions.