Stasiland by Anna Funder Page A

× woollens
1 × toothbrush & paste
1 × shoe cleaning gear
Women:
In addition, sanitary supplies
    They would be locked up indefinitely and for no reason at all, but they would have clean shoes, teeth and underwear.
    By mid-1989 the demonstrations after Monday prayer meetings at Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche were spreading all over the country to Erfurt, Halle, Dresden, Rostock. People were protesting against travel restrictions, shortages of basic goods and the falsification of election results. Their protests took them to the offices of most obvious representatives of the regime: not the Party, but the Stasi. They cried, ‘Democracy, Now or Never!’, ‘Stasi Out!’ and ‘SED. You’re hurting me!’
    In August, the Hungarians cut the barbed wire at their border with Austria, creating the first hole in the Eastern Bloc. Thousands of East Germans flocked there and ran, crying with relief and anger, across the border. Thousands more travelled to the West German embassies in Prague and Warsaw and set up camp, creating a diplomatic nightmare in German–German relations. Finally, the regime agreed to let them out, on condition that the trains taking them to West Germany travel through the GDR. Honecker hoped to humiliate the ‘expellees’ by confiscating their identity papers. And he wanted them to fear (as they did) that he would stop the trains and arrest the passengers.
    Honecker’s plans backfired. The people on the trains ripped up their identity papers with tears of joy. Thousands flocked to the stations to see if they could climb aboard, and to cheer on their compatriots.
    In early October, Leipzig was at a flashpoint. Petrol-station attendants were refusing to refill police vehicles; the children of servicemen were being barred from creches. Those who worked in the centre of town near the Nikolaikirche were sent home early. Hospitals called for more blood. People made their wills and said things they wanted their children to remember, before going out to demonstrations. There were rumours of tanks and helicopters and water cannon coming, but then so were the postcards from friends who had already reached the west. The people went on to the streets.
    Honecker ordered that the ‘counter-revolutionaries’ in Leipzig were to be ‘nipped in the bud’. ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘can hinder the progress of socialism.’ On 8 October Mielke began to activate the plans for ‘Day X’, sending out orders to the local Stasi branches to open their envelopes. But things were already too far gone. Instead of incarcerating the people, the Stasi, hiding in their buildings, locked themselves up. In the regional offices they had 60,000 pistols, more than 30,000 machine guns, hand grenades, sharpshooter’s rifles, anti-tank guns, and tear gas. Fears of lynching ran high. Leipzig police were shown photographs of a Chinese policeman immolated by the mob at Tiananmen Square and told, ‘It’s you or it’s them.’ But they were also ordered not to shoot or use violence unless it was used against them.
    On 7 October 1989 the GDR celebrated its forty years of existence with lavish parades in Berlin. There was a sea of red flags, a torchlight procession, and tanks. The old men on the podium wore light-grey suits studded with medals. Mikhail Gorbachev stood next to Honecker, but he looked uncomfortable among the much older Germans. He had come to tell them it was over, to convince the leadership to adopt his reformist policies. He had spoken openly about the dangers of not ‘responding to reality’. He pointedly told the Politbüro that ‘life punishes those who come too late’. Honecker and Mielke ignored him, just as they ignored the crowds when they chanted, ‘Gorby, help us! Gorby, help us!’
    In Leipzig the extraordinary courage of the people didn’t waver, and it didn’t break out into anything else. On 9 October 70,000 protesters went out in the dark, in big coats and carrying candles. They stood outside the Runden Ecke