Robotron and black lists

Stasi prison May 15, 1985

That was fun yesterday!

Baby Schubert greets me friendly today.

He doesn’t show any sign of embarrassment.

“I received the file of your conviction 1981.”

“Why didn’t you have it with all the other stuff?”

“It is time-barred and supposed to be omitted from this case.”

Oh, now we are playing ‘lawful and correct’.

It is too ridiculous to be funny.

Back in 1980, I was 15, a friend of mine and I tried to escape to the West.

Throughout a couple of years we had tried to find answers to some really basic questions.

Some statements we had made were turned against us and got us into trouble with school and the Police.

Growing up knowing that we were supposed to shut up and swallow our doubts about that system for the rest of our lives was unbearable.

On our journey through the country, in the dead of Winter, we were caught as we seeked shelter at night.

The investigation was short and simple as were the charges.

In January 1981 the District Court Leipzig sentences us to 2 years on probation.

The only reason why we avoided jail was our age, below 16, both of us.

Due to that I lost my signed contract for a dream business education with the country’s biggest electronics manufacturer ROBOTRON to become a micro electronics specialist.

Original indictment by the District Court Leipzig:
"...as teenagers with full culpability they attempted an unlawful crossing of the border and thus conducted a severe punishable offense against state order..."

Retaliations in school were kept to a minimum but they were there.

It was the time when I stopped expecting the state and system to improve.

It was the start to build my own believe system and to understand what I did NOT want in life.

And this shit hole of a country was on top of that list.

*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.