The Lost World of Communism, East Germany, 2009

Watch this short documentary on East Germany and tell me we aren't most of the way there.  https://t.co/R9Qe6lWKKq

— Polly St George: Documenting Bread & Circuses (@FringeViews) January 4, 2025

The Lost World of Communism, Czechoslovakia, 2/3.

The Lost World of Communism, Romania, 3/3.

11:30  Berlin was then the espionage capital of the world.  and for those like Ursula, living and working on the front line of the Cold War, East Germany could be a lawless place.  

I went to the Fredericstrasse.  There, two gentlemen addressed me by name, inviting me to get into their car, telling me that they would take me to my work at DEFA.  We drew very fast for quite a while.  I was a bit surprised by this because my office wasn't that far away.  I've been kidnapped and nobody knew.  

Protesting her innocence, Ursula was sentenced to 15 years hard labor for espionage by a military court and transported almost 2,000 miles away to a labor camp in Vorkuta, Russia.

We were close to the Polar Sea.  There was a wind with ice crystals.  Summer was almost worse.  The tundra around for Kunta was a marsh land.  There were hordeCaliforniaCarlshorsttoes.  To work in 45 ° centigrade heat without sun protection, without water for 12 hours every day.

From 1945 onwards, tens of thousands were sent from East Germany to Siberia, many of them never to return.  Ursula, one of the lucky ones, was released only years later, which she revealed that she had, in fact, worked for British intelligence since before her arrival in Berlin. 

I would do errands for the English.  I worked as a courier.  In retrospect, it seems very naive.  I don't understand how I could have been that stupid.

Six months after Ursula's kidnap on the 17th of June 1953, the workers rose up against the worker and peasant state.  One of the governments strike amongst construction workers was overpaid soon turned into wider demands for free elections and the resignation of the government itself by late morning Soviet troops stationed in East Germany had to intervene.

At 11:30 we heard the tanks, the chains of the tanks, then we realized the Russians were coming.  The crowd started howling and when the people at the end of the demonstration refused to give way, the soldiers fired in the air.  And when you hear gunfire, you start running automatically.  --Horst Kreeter  

Horst Kreeter, a Berlin petrol pump attendant, was in the thick of the action that day.  

We threw stones at the tanks. Seeing the tanks fire in your direction, the sheer sound of it causes you to piss in your pants. Someone had died on the Marx-Engles Square that day.  He was run over by a tank.  There was a blanket and a wooden cross, which said, 'Murdered by the Soviet Army.'  It was a day of glory for me.  We showed them what could be done.  The police could do nothing.  The government could do nothing.  The secret police, the Stasi, could do nothing.

Over 50 civilians were killed that day.  In the clamp down that followed, more than 20,000 were arrested, scores were executed.  The country's leaders had been caught off guard.  From now on, security and the control of the people would be the government's overriding concern.  

16:00. People themselves were concerned  about simply getting by.  The 1950s were austere times and food and goods were in limited supply.  Families and organizations of West Germany sent aid packages to the east.

We were so happy and surprised as we lived such a frugal life.  When the package arrived, we couldn't believe our eyes.  The wrapping was so attractive and colorful.  We'd never seen anything like this.  

Roland, the youngest, couldn't open the presents fast enough, helping Wolfgang beaming at his discoveries.  

In 1954, my father received the 8mm camera AK8.  These are the first films he recorded at Christmas I'm the baby 18 months old that's his self-made gramophone we lived in Berlin in Carlshorst, which is under soviet occupation