The Vietnamese Party

Stasi prison April 13, 1985

Midnight.

I decide to follow an invitation of some vietnamese friends in the neighborhood.
It is bizarre.
While scores of former South Vietnamese die in labor camps or being executed as we raise our glasses, these students enjoy the support of the communist brothers in Eastern Europe to celebrate their opportunities.

Asylum for Vietnamese workers in Leipzig Grünau in 1985.

While these poor chaps know nothing about the lies and atrocities their government inflicts on their countrymen and the hallow promises they fell victim to, the house of cards I’ve been brought up in keeps tumbling down.

Drunk and sore in my heart I wander off back home.
Through my foggy mind and the misty air trenched in amber street lanterns I start formulating a letter.

A letter that would give explanation but no comfort to my parents as to why I left them. 
Why I chose to discontinue this life.
Why I left them behind.
Within this place that swallowed all smiles.

Arriving in my room I spend the next two hours writing and contemplating how to protect them. As I have told nobody about my plans and desperate state of mind I must be extra careful not to activate my parent’s instincts.
Not to give any doubt or reason to compromise their well being in this state after I'm gone.

I must keep them in the dark.
And still: I need them to know that I am gone.

And that I love them.

 

*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.