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It was 7th January 1953.
I was arrested under rather dubious circumstances
in Johannestal, East Berlin.
I often wondered what the reason was.
I was often asked what I’d done. I’d done absolutely nothing.
I didn’t even harm the GDR.
I wasn’t spying but I wished I had.
This is the view today. They used to be cellblocks.
The worst thing was the crowded, cramped conditions
in which we lived in these cells. We rarely got out.
We rarely got so-called free time to march in the yard,
sometimes not for a week or even two.
We were caged in, nine of us in a tiny cell,
just about 4 metres long and 2 to 3 metres wide.
Nine prisoners, very different people.
There were criminals, so-called economic criminals
and then us political prisoners, who didn’t officially exist in the GDR.
People who didn’t accept the GDR
were automatically criminals.
In the final year of my detention I was moved from a tiny cell
to a large hall, where there were 30 to 50 people.
It was full of rows of double bunks.
Of course there were many interesting people to talk to.
After I’d done a year, without a hearing, without knowing
how long I would be here, without a conviction,
just putting up with this hardship,
I decided I wanted to know. I hadn’t done anything.
What was going to happen to me?
So I went on hunger strike.
I refused to eat.
Consequently they refused to give me anything to drink.
I wasn’t allowed to drink water.
I was given no liquids.
On the contrary, I was locked away from everything.
I was put in solitary confinement
and had to wait in confinement to see what would happen.
I noticed I was losing my strength.
I refused to eat for ten days in total.
I had just about lost all my strength,
and felt as though I was starting to lose consciousness,
when a blackbird landed on the window sill of my cell
and sang a wonderful song.
After this song and this strange situation where I’d given up on myself,
a guard came and said:
“You’ve got a hearing with a lawyer.” After almost a year.
The lawyer told me we had a court date.
Anyway, the time here was a very unpleasant time.
There wasn’t much joy here.
The only thing was the visits we got once a month.
I was finally released in July 1955
after I had served the last day of my sentence.
I served my 2 and a half-year sentence.
After my release and I had got out,
it took a long time before I could feel happy again.
I felt a sense of freedom,
but I’d forgotten how to feel joy or happiness.