Silent scream

Pick a room, any room...

At a recent workshop given by volunteers from London’s arts radio station Resonance FM, they were at pains to point out that silence is not always a bad thing. A short pause can sometimes say much more than a hundred words ever could.

I was reminded of this comment today in the former Stasi prison Hohenschonhausen. The guided tour had ended and, as it grew dark outside, I was left alone on the 2nd floor of the interrogation block. Door after brown padded door lined either side of this long corridor till the dark lines they made converged like rail tracks or cross hairs.

This is where disoriented prisoners were brought – one at a time so as not to pass anyone on the way – to meet their one source of human contact: their interrogation officer. Listening to the litany of offences against human decency the guide reeled off, a sense of revulsion welled up inside; coupled with the uncomfortable thought that sensory deprivation and water torture in unknown locations still goes on today. And sometimes closer to home than we’d like to think: ‘extraordinary rendition’ has a much nicer ring to it than kidnapping, though.

Shocking though they were, the allegations of forced-abortion and exposure to deadly X-rays were almost superfluous: given the exent of the methodical application of more mundane methods of destroying the individual. Dissenters and would-be escapees to the West were more commonly crushed by the application of mental cruelty, under the guise of ‘operative psychology’.

But what lingers now in the memory is that silence; a silence that was not even broken by a buzz from those harsh fluorescent lights; a silence so intense you could hear the hum of your brain’s electrical impulses in between your ears.

Minutes seemed like hours. What must have it been like to endure that for days, weeks and sometimes years? Not knowing where you were, even the guard walked behind you to avoid the tiniest trace of a relationship or connection that eye contact might constitute.

Stepping through the iron gates and out of the claustrophobic grey courtyard, I walked back along the snowy Freienwalder Strasse to the M5 tram stop. Passing a warm and fully stocked supermarket, orange light spilled from snug-looking apartments with lacey curtains and I wondered who lived there. Or more pertinently, who they were and how they lived with themselves?

Of the 91,000 full-time Stasi, 20 people had been prosecuted after the Wall came down. Many of them are living comfortably in that same area; some are doctors and lawyers; most refuse to apologise. And so for the ex-prisoners who lead the tours of this once-secret dungeon, any acknowledgement of wrongdoing they seek must come from tourists and not torturers. ‘Sorry’ is not a word that comes easily to Stasi lips.