I became fascinated again with the topic of East Germany and the Berlin Wall with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall back in November. Looking around on Amazon for books on the topic and especially the subject of the Stasi, this book kept appearing. Though I was looking more for a macro-history of the topic rather than a human angle piece, the consistently positive reviews for Ms. Funder's book grabbed my interest. I was not disappointed I took the bait.
Ms. Funder's book is alternatingly moving and enraging, but always intriguing. She captures well the tragedy of the eastern part of Germany that was never truly freed from tyranny after World War II and indeed only transitioned from one set of brutes, thugs and criminals to another set of the same. You cannot come away from this book not appreciating the freedom God has blessed us with in the Western world nor taking it for granted again.
Ms. Funder's chronicle of the brutality of the criminal Hoenecker/Mielke regime is intelligent and well crafted. Funder is a terrific writer and she is a supremely talented at chronicaling history with a name and face attached as she brings forth the accounts of ex-Stasi agents and the subjects of their oppression who suffered in Stasi prisons and the larger prison that was the DDR.
The tale of the woman whose son was injured during the birthing process and is subsequently spirited out of East Berlin to West Berlin for treatment and her attempts to escape the East to be with her convalescing baby is as heartbreaking a tale you are ever likely to encounter. But at the same time it renews your faith in humanity as this woman refuses to betray an innocent man to the vile Hoeneker regime in exchange for an exit visa to West Berlin. Her's is one of the great stories of courage and absolute decency I've known.
The hapless woman's tale is also one of the most galling stories of oppression by a regime psychotically obsessed with preventing the free movement of its people as I've come across and I've studied a great deal about the evil regimes in the former USSR, North Korea, Saddam's Iraq, Cuba, etc. Yet some of the stories in this book still managed to shock my sensibilities despite all I know about the depredations inflicted by other regimes on their hapless peoples.
The arrogance and lack of shame of some of the ex-Stasi reptiles Ms. Funder interviews is also an outrage. But I'm glad Ms. Funder included their perspective which made the history she develops much richer. It is an interesting study to see the various personalities of these brutes and what they think of their role in that oppressive regime today.
One of the things you will immediately notice about Funder's book is the degree to which she is present in the book and very much included in the accounts she develops. At first I wondered if this would be off-putting, making the book read more like a novel than as a history, especially as she developed the story of her German drinking partner. I found myself sort of dreading the parts of the book that included him but as was so often the case with people who lived in the East it turned out her friend had an interesting tale to tell as well.
Some might find Ms. Funder's omnipresence in the book self-indulgent but I found it ended up making the book more readable and injecting more of the human element in a book that recounts so much inhumanity. This is afterall a tale told from the human perspective and Ms. Funder is a very likeable personality indeed. I also appeciated her outrage and description of actual physical distress Funder experienced as she encounters tale after tale after tale of criminality by people who abused their power.
So prepare for a fascinating tale into darkness as you re-live a very dark period and place in human history. For Americans who may look with skepticism on your own country and institutions, pick this book up and learn once again to appreciate the freedom and abundance you live in.
It will put into perspective as well all those who decry supposed "torture" of terrorist prisoners at Gitmo and elsewhere. I defy them to read this book and still tell me the terrorist mass murderers in our custody have endured anything even a millioneth as horrifying as the East German regime inflicted on their own people and those who ran afoul of the regime there, often on trumped up charges rammed through to conviction with kangaroo courts.
The Al Qaeda fiends at Gitmo are living at a Sandals Resort compared to what the prisoners of the East German regime experienced. Nothing that the murderers at Gitmo have experienced is torture, (and even then only 3 of the top Al Qaeda leaders imprisoned there were even waterboarded, which produced information that prevented further attacks according to CIA sources and other arrests) certainly not when compared to the sadism of the Stasi jailers. The jihadis have been treated with absolute deference and respect compared to what the DDR regime accorded even those of its citizens not imprisoned.
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Top reviews from other countries
Emi Bevacqua
Heavy history that reads like a novel!
Reviewed in Germany on March 25, 2017
fishface42
DETRITUS OF A 40 YEAR EXPERIMENT. (Also, See DDR ON U Tube.)
Reviewed in Canada on February 15, 2016