Celebrating red
Stasi prison May 01, 1985
White doe bread rolls and jelly for breakfast.
Real coffee with creme and sugar.
No interrogation today.
It’s May 1st.
Public holiday.
Celebrating RED.
Today they show the world again how great everything is.
Tanks and rockets will roll down Karl-Marx-Allee.
Paramilitary combat troops will parade.
Bus loads of the “real people”, the workers and farmers who “own the land” will applaud, wear stupid uniforms and get drunk in the afternoon. When kids ask their parents for the purpose of the whole commotion they either repeat what the state media and the loud speakers vomit into the masses or their parents won’t have an educating response - which is what I had experienced as a child until I asked my dad why he is one of the few not to fly a state or red flag on our window.
“It means nothing to me."
I must have been 8 or 9 at the time and this was the first time when I realized that there was more to it than that he just wasn’t behind the whole thing.
More sensible as this had made me I started paying more attention to some such impressions and episodes within my and other families and circles and when I hit 13 I was sitting between the big, sticky red goo THEY had pressed into that little brain of mine and the real world with the real people who would simply duck to avoid and dodge questions by their children.
What a weird way of growing up.
While the “good soldiers” paraded their “good weapons” with red carnation in front of the the horde of local politicians and guests of honor from around the international communist spectrum - the call boys in this Stasi pre-trial prison served their political prisoners (who actually don’t exist the state keeps insisting) a splendid breakfast and:
Chicken with mashed potatoes for lunch!
This is the best food I had since I've came here.
It’s been two weeks now - we’ll have gray bread and margarine again from tomorrow.
I’m sure my dad will hate the red flags in the neighbors windows today.
*Testimony -> Start. This blog entry is part of a linear narrated testimony of the contemporary witness Jens Thieme who was imprisoned 1985-1986 as a political prisoner in various GDR prisons by the GDR Ministry of State Security. Stasi prison, Stasi jail, Stasi detention.