Punch

Stasi prison August 06, 1985

3:30am - again!

Pfffffffffffffff.

2nd day.

This is ridiculous!

Why am I doing this?

What if I just don’t do it?

Ok, I need some money for cigarettes and tea.

And to escape the daily lard bombardment.

But working for these bastards is wrong.

Some guys refuse to work for a week per month.

The price is solitary confinement.

I don’t care.

Hydraulic punch press machine.

There is a huge box with unfinished drawer runners.

It’s super hard to snap the pieces into the clamp and to take them out.

Punch press machine as used at MEWA by the political prisoners in Naumburg, GDR. IKEA used the parts for many years

The machine punches a set of round and oval holes into the metal runner.

They gave me cotton balls for the noise.

They do nothing.

I started at 5:45am.

By lunchtime at 11am I got 500 pieces.

2’200 pieces is the norm until shift end at 3pm.

“You’ll have to be at that rate by Friday!”

“And if I don’t?”

“No pay!”

Hate that foreman.

50-70 marks pay a month.

A pack of cigarettes is 1.60, I need 3 a day.

*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.