Welcome to another incredible episode of Radio GDR. Judging by your extremely positive reaction, you thoroughly enjoyed part 1 of our three part interview with Ralph Hanel, Kung Fu Master, former stasi prisoner and an incredible survivor. Now it's time for part 2 - listen how Ralph confronts his past when he discovers how his ex-girlfriend oddly "borrowed" a baby in his name after they broke up, what stasi handcuffs did to his wrists when he was in prison, and how he became an actor and even played a role as an East German general. We even hear about the book of poison - you'll have to listen to the episode to find out about that interesting nugget. Ralph's story of survival inspires me, and I hope it does the same with you.
 You MUST listen to Ian Sanders' three part interview of Ralph before listening to these. They will absolutely set the context for these episodes, and are MUST LISTENS. 
 Episode 1 - Ralph – DJing and Kung Fu in East Germany
 Episode 2 - Ralph – Arrested and interrogated by the Stasi
 Episode 3 - Ralph – A prisoner in an East German jail
 Read Ralph's short stories using this link
 Our ability to bring you stories from behind the Berlin Wall is dependent on monthly donors like you. Visit us at  https://www.eastgermanypodcast.com/p/support-the-podcast/ to contribute. For the price of a Berliner Pilsner, you can feel good you are contributing to preserve one of the most important pieces of Cold War history.
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 Vielen dank for being a listener!

Welcome to Radio GDR, an English-language podcast all about the life and times of East Germany.

Listening to Radio Berlin International, the voice of the German Democratic Republic, European European service.

East Berlin gets dolled up for the GDR's 20th anniversary.

Welcome to another incredible episode of Radio GDR.

Judging by your extremely positive reaction, you thoroughly enjoyed part 1 of our three-part interview with Ralph Hainel, Kung Fu master, former Stasi prisoner, and an incredible survivor.

Listen how Ralph confronts his past when he discovers how his ex-girlfriend oddly borrowed a baby in his name after they broke up, what Stasi handcuffs did to his wrists when he was in prison, and how he became an actor and even played a role as an East German general in a movie.

You'll have to listen to the episode to find out about that interesting nugget.

Don't forget to listen to our friend Ian's Cold War Conversations interviews of Ralph before listening to the first and second episodes on Radio GDR.

Everything Ralf tells us will suddenly make sense in an incredible way.

When I came back now, I had once again a lot of difficulties here in East Germany because now it's the next generation.

There's 1 person in particular that is sad or angry that the parents generation lost back then in 1989.

The ones who had the big posts, the big positions in East Germany.

So because of it, good friend of mine had to call the government office here in this city.

She only wanted to talk, it's a citizen office, it's about in Germany you still have to as soon as you move in somewhere, go to this office and have your address there.

If you move, you have to change your address.

So Germans, everything has to be stamped and in triplicate.

So she wanted now to ask in this government office, the citizen office, this person who is dealing with my case about being registered here in the city after returning from Canada.

And she only wanted to say who is dealing with names with the letter H, but she actually mentioned my name, Heinl.

And then for a moment, it was quiet on the phone, and the lady in the government office started to cry and cry and cry.

Now imagine it's a big office, there are some 678 desks with clients that pull a number on the outside and then number 583 come in.

So on different windows are different people sitting and 1 person now suddenly starts to have a crying fit in there and cannot get this person consoled.

So and then she said you you are talking about Ralf Fenel who back then did the Kung Fu here in East Germany and worked in this workplace and she yeah because even today 1 still gets suspicious and then they met for a short time and then she said, since the wall came down, I am in psychological counseling and I have this huge guilt.

There's something I could have told him back then that may or may not have made a difference.

The Secret Service, they told me if you tell him something then you lose your baby.

The husband was having some other high security risk job and they told him if anything is being told you will lose your job.

Each time we hugged, she had some tears on her face.

We never got to meet privately, talking about what had happened.

But there too, I get asked by young people, aren't you mad that somebody may have done something against you back then and said nobody who has not lived in the system and has experienced when you are threatened to lose your baby when your child when you're threatened to lose your job.

If you have experienced this, then you can form an opinion.

If not, listen to it, make it different in your life, be nice to people.

And if somebody loses his game, you never know what's going on in somebody's life.

She's for decades, again, crying over this.

But this also shows you that in which the secret service has gone into family structures have to this very day hurt people, destroyed people in a way that, yeah, okay, some of it has resurfaced now in different ways, but that it is almost impossible to imagine, especially people who grow up in democratic countries and who could say a lot.

We know not everything, but say a lot at least, that this was back then completely different.

Sometimes I wish there would be a magic button to say, okay, it's all good now, forget about it, stuff has happened, because nobody who has not been threatened in ways like that can say how you would have done yourself.

He was a very prominent figure from East German politics.

He later said, you know what, publicly, he came into the United German government later and he said, I was not put under distress, so I cannot know how I might have acted.

None of us can be 100% sure if your life is threatened, if your family is threatened, what will you do to keep your family safe?

And here I must mention, because some people say, yeah, but if you're really strong and if you go against it, like Rocky or Rambo, said, yeah, that's great in movie script.

And you have to think about the interrogation officers back then.

The main 1 told me with pride, we are educated psychologists.

And later I read notes where they got together and said okay we have read this report, we have heard about this from his parents, we know from his cellmate what he talked about in the cell.

Now we're producing the next approach, how in the next interrogation, how we praise him, where we make it a little bit tighter, the screws, so that he gives in, so that he has the feeling he's winning some, losing some, that he's not completely discouraged.

So they were preparing for this in a way.

Well, where did a lot of this knowledge go?

We also know it went overseas later, because a lot, that's what the 1 who kind of several times saved my life, The 1 Wing Chun Kung Fu student who was doing East German Times told me on the street that he's working, more or less, that he's working for the Secret Service, the 1 who I was supposed to throw out of my Kung Fu group.

Sometimes I think, oh God, was I as a teenager this naive?

Yeah, of course, we all were in those young years today differently.

When he said, please throw me out of the group.

I don't want to do anything that I'm supposed to do.

Now you can imagine where I work and it took me a few moments.

And the 1 who was taken over by the West German secret service where I was so surprised when I met him once in 1993 and then once again in 2003 where he told me go back to Canada to be safe if your passport is still valid for a few months go back there regardless how live I haven't heard again from him this too I have been asked and sometimes to look out either he has quit the job or yeah he was terminated.

Because today I would like to ask why was I even in the 1990s and the 2000s where and how was there a flag on my name?

Where and how was there anywhere a notice if these guys come back, notify department so and so or so and so or call this secret phone number?

Sometimes comes the question, who the heck are you?

The closest is some people said, maybe you have inadvertently seen something, overheard something that was deemed a high risk that has to be cleaned up.

We've seen enough movies now, if it's Wag the Dog with Dustin Hoffman or so, well, we know, okay, everybody gets in the end eliminated, that whatever the plot is, no loose ends.

Well, as you're talking, first of all, very quickly circling back to this woman in the government office who's crying, your level of forgiveness is amazing.

And second, you think about in any state, you have your normal life and you have the government, which is supposed to be managing the everyday simplicities of the public good.

And when that government, like in East Germany, is so powerful, it's such a large state apparatus that puts its tentacles into that normal life as much as it did in East Germany.

And as well for your story, what you're telling me right now is, is because of that, how do you possibly avoid not seeing something that you're not supposed to?

How are you supposed to keep yourself away from that when the state is so ever present, so in your face, has tentacles in your family, is literally using psychology to work you in such a way that you're spilling secrets or they're trying to mold you into the person that they want you to be, how do you avoid something like that?

Yeah, it's pretty much impossible, because if you hear those audio snippets that still exist from Erich Mielke, the last big boss of the East German Secret Service who always said, comrades, we need to know who, where, when, why, with whom, we need to know everything.

And this is part also why everything collapsed.

Since they needed to know everything, so this is where I assume where it also went sideways, that the Rostock Stasi was about to arrest me and that the Berlin Stasi had sent my father to get rid of something.

Oh my god, maybe I was arrested 1 day too early.

And that's why the Berlin department said, man, there's still something in the apartment before the Rostock guys go in there and search, we have to remove it, otherwise there's some interdepartmental chaos.

And talking about tentacles into families, because this lady from the government office was doing East German Times besties with a, let's say, major girlfriend of mine back then.

And what else came out now, that's also just recent, She had told my friend who had called there in the office, and who had met up with her, and then she had told me, she said, so many years have gone by in 1988.

She said, ah, yeah, so many years have gone by, but how this girlfriend, her bestie back then, and you always picked up our baby son.

She said, yeah, you were working mostly or you were doing your Wing Chun Kung Fu, but she always came to us and said on Friday, hey, Ralph wants that we have again a weekend with your baby boy, just kind of a little bit test run.

So it's a little bit time limited run, nothing can go wrong.

And she said, my husband, she said, I'm still married to the same guy today.

My son, actually born 1988, I have told him that I've met you now and that you guys took care of him back then.

And I said, oh, yeah, you see, years go by.

And then I was once again feeling, and this now just a short time ago, feeling so weird.

I went home and talked to a couple of friends who I confide into, and said, there's 1 big problem with this whole story.

I wasn't together anymore with this girlfriend that she was besties with, who in my name had picked up for half a year in 1988 again and again this baby boy.

Now another insider, everybody who's a parent has now a hair stand up and thinks, oh my gosh what the heck is that story?

And insiders have told me now that sometimes among many other possibilities cases were prepared by this department of psychologists that it could have been that if anything goes sideways with me whatsoever, if I would have fled East Germany, would have been in the West, that they could have brought a case to the public that I have done something to the baby, mishandled the baby, whatever it is that I was taking the baby hostage or that she then gave it back to her girlfriend, oh my god, I saved your baby from him whatsoever.

The really weird and strange part is this girl, my former girlfriend, I have met her again after the wall came down.

I've met her in West Germany, I've met her in Switzerland and so on.

And many years later in the 2000s, she with her now husband visited my mom in former East Berlin still, and she never ever mentioned that she in 1988 constantly borrowed this baby in my name for months and months.

So there's a possibility that the photos taken or so that it was prepared to basically destroy my life, get anything done.

This is still 1 of those weird things where sometimes I sit in the evening and think, I know this woman too, this former girlfriend.

I've met her in the years after the war came down in the reunited Germany.

And since she did not mention anything to me about it, after the wall came down, it must have been something that wasn't kosher.

Plus, the 1 who works now in the government office says, I don't know what happened to my bestie since the wall came down.

And she works in an area of the government where you can find out where somebody lives.

And I could not bring it over me to tell her, you know what, I actually know where she lives.

But this is what, can you imagine even after decades when your child is already an adult, maybe she has already, gosh, now I was thinking German, maybe she has already grandchild from her son or so, You cannot tell a mother, a woman, that her baby was possibly once in real danger or that something happened.

What happened, what for it was, I do not know.

And since the 1 who works now at a government agency cannot find out about her former bestie, the fact that this girlfriend did not talk to me in the years after about that.

Yeah, So that's why I was actually even more happy that she did not want to have a private sit down because then she would have said, oh here's the sun you were holding back then, you were changing diapers and geez.

What came out after the wall came down in the first couple of years, I've just seen it again in old newspapers, which I have also gotten via eBay, because there are many stories told in the early 90s that today are completely out of the news.

You cannot even Google this anymore because it was early on, never scanned into the archives.

There was, for example, from the East German Secret Service officer, a doctor work, discovered the so-called poison book and how many ways and at what opportunities and with which poisons under what circumstances people can be killed.

For example, what I've just read in this newspaper article again from

or so, was that for example, how to prepare the bra of a mom still breastfeeding her baby, how to deposit the poison in the bra so that the baby dies.

Where you think, oh my gosh, this is how somebody in part has made his doctor title that maybe for many, many, many years later in a reunified Germany was working in a hospital and maybe was in that field working again, advising young women, pregnancy department whatsoever.

And so, and then I had to think about this, whatever they may have in this first half year of 1908 with that baby in my name prepared, this could have gone in so many directions.

And there you feel today again for quite a few moments really uneasy because you think, okay, if this was done, number 1, Why?

Now again, who the heck did they think I was?

Or why was I such a danger to them that such actions were prepared in case it has to be brought to the public or whatsoever.

Same as what you heard about my poisoning in

I was trying to find the doctor who treated me back then but no success.

Sometimes, even though I have so many stories to tell, it leaves you for a moment while you tell it speechless.

To what measures the human mind can think of, create, for good and for evil, that lets you sometimes shudder.

Those are the moments where I think, oh my gosh, okay, I want somewhere up British Columbia on some farm far away from any city, a little water well there, generator for power and have nothing to do with humanity again.

But then it draws me back into the city when you're then again in London or in New York and you take it in and you think, okay, no, I still want to be part of all of this.

But it catches you sometimes at night that you think what is possible.

Connected or connecting to those times, I bought a few items for East German history.

They're either very expensive or very rare that you can get them on eBay.

But finally, I got a pair of old East German handcuffs.

What have you planned this weekend buying handcuffs?

I think then I mentioned, hey, I also have a choke chain and they okay, I don't want to know anymore.

But the point is, this too is a good reminder.

Number 1, when you in the country where you did not expect this to happen, have to enter within the secret service building to get for your first court day.

You have to put on the suit and then you get those handcuffs.

And they're so, people look for them because they're so good, stable, simple, lightweight, but good.

So I've heard that some private companies, security companies still use them or use them again and buy them at just about any price Because when you've got them, you've got them.

This needs to be shared on the Facebook group.

I'll send you the picture of those handcuffs.

The way my life stories go, maybe those were mine.

So they're supposedly out of old secret service merchandise collection.

So then I remember inside in the hall, inside this building that had several exits so that a car could pull out there, there, there, 3 exits, because most people who were prisoners in there did not know where they are.

I happened to have been growing up in the city, so I knew where I was.

So with a cellmate, I had to tell them, oh, listen to those church bells.

You as a tourist took a picture of, oh, now I've got an idea.

So I was standing there, and then I still remember 1 of the secret service guards that transported you to the courts, he was pointing at his gun and saying, don't try anything.

And you think even back then, hey, we're in East Germany, there's a big wall around it.

What the heck do you think I'm trying to do?

And then they put a choke chain around you and you will see it on the picture.

It's a very simple design, 1 tiny little twist and it almost tears your ligaments, it almost crushes your hand joints.

Then you get into this car and I knew the court building is by car, let's say 6 minutes from there, and they drove us around for 45 minutes.

There was somebody else still in this little car.

It was 1 of those little trucks where on the side it said something like Gemüse, vegetables or fish.

Just having a tour for the market, yeah, well, we were fresh meat for West Germany, for the East, East End party to make money.

So, finally, we arrived at the Kohl building at the back.

And then there was the actual historical city wall behind the building.

So now you have those huge handcuffs you will see on a photo on.

Then 1 guard has you on the choke chains and then there's still a couple of armed guards and there's no way are you going to jump this historical city wall that's I don't know 4 or 5 meters high?

Are you going to pull your arms out of this choke chain then they shoot you or it would have been impossible.

Then I went up and I remember going up the stairway in this court building, a small 1 in Rostock, and I just looked to the left and this guard, a really young guy, twisted the choke chain just a little bit.

I usually don't see it very often, but at this moment I was ready to kill.

And I was after all already a Wing Chun Kung Fu instructor, even though not at the level what I continued to decades after.

But I looked for a moment, there was a flash in front of me, how I'm taking it apart.

And I was thinking, it doesn't matter how tall you are, how strong you are, take those cuffs out, baby, and then let's get ready to rumble.

But it was more so, it was kind of multiplied dozens of times because of the psychological parts, all the interrogations for months, what is today called white torture.

But I could imagine at this point how somebody snaps and kills somebody and afterwards says, you know what, if it happens again, this young guy felt so proud of this power.

And I don't remember anymore if it was him.

So from the court building, early 1989, Berlin was still up, Cold War still full intact.

A quick jump ahead to 1991, Germany reunited.

So with my Sifu, that's your personal Kung Fu teacher, that was the first seminar from him.

Okay, it was now reunited, but it was still him coming from the West in the city where I had founded the very first East German Wing Chun Kung Fu school.

And I'm always so happy to say those sentences again.

At this seminar I was announced as the first instructor of former East Germany from all those people.

And they always say, okay, I have to toot into my own horn.

But How did I get the connection from Cold War, court building, to the Wing Chun Kung Fu Seminar in 1991?

Because I could sit beside my Sifu and handing out certificates to students who were at this day passing their exams, and suddenly I see a Kung Fu organization passport, there's a little picture in there, and I don't know, it's some strange, so in a movie you would have now a scene on the side that you see suddenly from the uniform, the hat.

I saw suddenly, this was 1 of the guards out of the secret service prison and in his Kung Fu passport, It said, do you speak German or?

The job term in there, it said, Facharbeiter für Lagerwirtschaft.

Basically the dude back in the halls of a company who stores the different items the company is selling in the different shelves.

Department D, the guy who does in the back with, yeah, who's pulling out boxes, storing boxes.

So, and yeah, well, He was somebody who had stored political prisoner in boxes, in cells.

And there he was in front of me, and typically in Chinese Kung Fu you had the certificate with both hands, because you're not as trusting as a Japanese martial arts where you bow all the way down, you trust your sensei in Chinese Kung Fu, it's a little bit more, hey, you could in the last minute still do something.

So you look each other in the eyes and there was this moment I was still holding on to the certificate, he was holding on but I was not letting go.

It was probably 2 people who looked at it, it was probably just a second, but for us it was a moment.

And his face from the chin up, boom, exploded and was red.

He recognized me because I had stood there in the cell just a couple years earlier and had done my Kung Fu exercises and I had realized who he was and strangely enough there was also his private address in the passport.

So I could have called from the back of my apartment to the building across where he had lived in Rostock back then.

He had lived just around the corner from where I was picked up by the secret service.

And then he knew, realized in a second who I was, I realized who he was, I didn't say anything afterwards, this is just reliving this moment.

Maybe he was the 1 with the choke chain, I don't recall anymore, But I said, okay, now you're a student here, for which I was back then by the Secret Service imprisoned for doing Kung Fu, for having contacts to West Germany, for them telling me this West German organization who had contacts with NATO, any martial arts school today is happy.

In the US, I've read it all the time, colleagues I have there, 1 has taught some FBI agent, somebody else had some special forces students, somebody else from the CIA, somebody else had some White House guard.

So everybody advertises their martial arts school with this, so they had done in the West.

But in the East, with the panic from the top minister, the top chief of the East German secret service.

They just saw Wing Chun Kung Fu, NATO, and that's why they told me back then, always again in the interrogations, you are not even aware.

They're teaching you only that on day X, when the capitalist world is attacking us and trying to crush communist paradise on earth, they are going to use you.

Then you will be activated and fight for them.

Which now that you gave me the hashtag movie, another eBay item.

I wanted to talk today about so many eBay items that I bought to illustrate my personal stories, but somehow the stories always overtake.

And the items, I have some even here on my table, lying next to me.

I bought 1 item, for some reason nobody was bidding, from the last army general of East Germany, from the National People's Army, a signed certificate as here with I congratulate you with this officer rank so-and-so to leave the National People Army but name and rank everything is blank but it's pre-signed and it's a real signature in a official map with the yellow, red, black cord on the side.

So it was from the army, an official thing.

And then I thought, okay, I had to buy it from the last army general of East Germany, a blank certificate.

But I did get to use it Because you may have also heard this part of this story was in Vancouver that 1 of my Kung Fu students, I knew he's an actor, I knew he's trying to get all kinds of acting jobs and then 1 day he came to my family and said, oh my gosh, do you guys think I've tried with so many actors to do a YouTube series, kind of like action series, but those actors suck in the martial arts scenes.

And then my kids too, duh, what do you think?

Because I found it now in my personal memos.

I don't do it as much as I should, but around 2000 I wrote down 1 of my wishes.

I had just published my first book, I wanted to publish a book to my name, I wanted to be a Kung Fu instructor, I wanted to speak English all day long in an English-speaking country, and so on.

So many wishes I had already fulfilled, but there was still, I had written down 1 day, I want to have a little part in some kind of movie.

I still have written in brackets there in my personal notes from 2000.

So then, long story short, in 2011 I think, I went over to Vancouver Island.

We started just to shoot the first scene, a huge fight scene that became, I must say, that this should be today 1 of those big martial arts fight scenes.

So a little bit mix of Bud Spencer, Terence Hill, I don't know if you know this old spaghetti western when they have their standoffs before the fists are flying.

So this YouTube series, what we were filming turned out so well that they said, okay, the character you did, we make you a general, a former East German general.

And then I thought, oh, I had on eBay gotten this thing.

So in 1 movie scene, I'm using this blank certificate there as some secret document.

And then we actually, out of this YouTube series, made a movie out of it.

See all East Germany Podcast - Radio GDR transcripts on Applepodcasts

Ralph Hänel, Part II - "Can I borrow your baby?", Stasi Handcuffs and the Book of Poison