I Was There: Fall of the Berlin Wall

From friend to informant - this was the reality in East Berlin as the secret police forced citizens to turn on each other and join their feared network of spies.

Source: Dateline

Video above: Watch Susanne’s story of life in East Berlin.

Susanne will never forget the night the Berlin Wall came down. But while she remembers the euphoria of that moment, she also remembers the difficulty of growing up in East Berlin during the time of the Stasi - East Germany’s secret police.

Known officially as the Ministerium für Staatsicherheit, they were one of the most feared institutions of the East German communist government.

“The Stasi was the most sophisticated surveillance apparatus in the world,” Susanne recalls.

Within East Germany they managed to infiltrate every aspect of society and daily life, including even the most personal relationships. They did this by forcing ordinary people to become informants.

As Susanne told Dateline, they undertook the “worst psychological warfare to make you become an informer.”

“No one can make judgements on people who ended up working for the Stasi.”

The organisation was formerly abandoned in 1990 – after the Berlin Wall came down – and the new unified German parliament eventually allowed Germans and foreigners permission to access their Stasi file – something Susanne has chosen never to do.

“I think it would hurt too much to find out about people I was really good friends with ... probably worked for the Stasi and I don’t want to know that because it’s not important anymore.”