Germany: January 4

"One voice in the crowd is small/But if he speaks the truth, he speaks for all."
-Tim Skipper, "I am a Symbol."

Edmund Burke once said, "Few are the partisans of a tyranny which has departed."  If that is true, I wonder if the terror and tyranny of the Stasi, the East German State security, has quite left us yet.  Almost no prosecutions of the former interrogators, who used refined psychological techniques to destroy their prisoners, have been carried out.  Few investigations of planned or accomplished Stasi assassinations have been brought any conclusive verdict.  Many of those who were on staff are still alive, and prospering.  And they write and speak, trying to justify what they did as "just following orders" and "enforcing the law of the GDR."

One can see why they say so; they would hardly incriminate themselves unless wracked by a significant amount of remorse.  Still, I feel about this the same way that I feel when I hear that most of the Nazi SS and SA were not brought to any kind of account either; justice has miscarried, and left the persecutors of the innocent off.

Fortunately, if that regime has not departed, neither has its dissidents.  The former prisoners of the Stasi have successfully moved to preserve the pre-trial prisons, in which these abuses against humanity were perpetrated, and serve as guides to the public, telling their stories.  We met with one of them, a man who had acted to help Berliners across the East/West border, one of the worst crimes in the GDR (called, almost amusingly, "Human trafficking hostiles to the state.")  He at least stands as a witness to what had happened; wishing to make the truth known, and not to let the oppressors have a monopoly upon the history of the place.

Something that was encouraging to note was the number of visitors I saw when there; mostly teenagers and young adults, who probably have no memory of a divided Germany.  They have come to listen, and will probably ask their parents about what they witnessed.  This is how a nation comes to terms with its own history, and Germany can only come out the stronger for that.