This is the third and final part of Ralph Hänel’s story of his life in East Germany.

In this episode, we hear his time in the Stasi prison in Cottbus which with its dark red brick façade was often referred to as the ‘Red Misery’.

It’s a chilling insight into Stasi prison conditions and the brutality that the political prisoners endured from the other inmates and the guards.

We also hear about Ralph’s eventual release and of some strange experiences he has in reunited Germany

Again I am honoured and humbled that Ralph shared this story with us. 

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I am delighted to welcome Ralph back to our Cold War conversation…

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Civilians that had never had anything to do with criminal life.

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This is the third and final part of Ralph Haenel's story of his life in East Germany.

In this episode we hear about his time in the Stasi prison in Cottbus, which with its dark red brick facade was often referred to as the Red Misery.

It's a chilling insight into Stasi prison conditions and the brutality that the political prisoners endured from the other inmates and the guards.

We also hear about Ralph's eventual release and of some strange experiences he has in the reunited Germany.

Again, I am honoured and humbled that Ralph shared this story with us.

Now I could really use your support to help me to continue the podcast.

A simple monthly donation via Patreon entitles you as a monthly supporter to the Sought After Cold War Conversations drinks coaster as a thank you and you bask in the warm glow of knowing that you are helping to preserve Cold War history.

Listen to 1 of our Patreons tell you why they donated to the podcast.

This podcast just brings it all back to life and Ian does such a good job of this.

And that's why I support him on the Patreon.

Just go to coldwarconversations.com slash donate.

If you can't wait for next week's episode, do visit our Facebook discussion group where guests and listeners continue the Cold War conversation.

Just search for Cold War conversations in Facebook.

So back to today's episode, I'm delighted to welcome Ralph back to our Cold War conversation.

Now in May 1989, I believe you're transferred to Cottbus-Stasi prison.

Number 1, there was a whole train going through East Germany that was just taking prisoners from 1 prison to the next.

I had no idea that there were so many prisons in the East.

I mean, we know now the stories even today from Russia how many prisons there are and what's happening there, but I had no idea.

So we were put in the morning into this train out of a big truck.

From the first time I saw other people up to this day for 10 months I've only seen the runners, the guards, their interrogation officers and the 1 cellmate I had.

And once a month for half an hour, my mom.

But until then I had never seen anybody else.

So, with real criminals now together who had broken somebody's face, who had attempted to rob a bank, who had gotten money somewhere, whatever.

Suddenly we were in this prison train together and the wagon was disguised as a postal wagon.

I still remember at 1 train station you could hear voices outside, women talking.

It was springtime and you were already for 10 months in a cell, in a mini cell.

I didn't even know how the sun looks anymore, so for real.

And now somebody was explaining there on the platform, oh yeah, this is where our mail in this wagon and 1 of the criminals started to bang on the window.

No, those are criminals, we are all murderers inside here and then you heard somebody scream outside running away.

I don't know what they must have thought.

So then they transported us, the wagon was always put onto another train at the end of yet another train, and then near Berlin we were left for several hours in the heat.

Just like this, the wagon, on some train track outside the train station and first people were going down unconscious.

You were in, there were tiny little cells, 2 people sitting on 1 seat and across from you 2 other people almost touching knees.

Since there were now real criminals in there you of course avoided that and you avoided eye contact but now imagine you try to sit in a part of a train wagon where you cannot move your left elbow, you cannot move your right elbow because there's sitting somebody, you cannot stretch your legs because there's the knees of somebody else and sweat is running down and at 1 point it stops because your lips are breaking because there's such enormous heat and you think you're about to lose it and what if you fall unconscious So at some point in the night we arrived in Cottbus and they had a long 2 guards held a long chain and your handcuffs were locked in onto this chain left and right left and right suddenly there were maybe 30-40 people on this line that were several other guards and then yes it had to happen.

On the other platform in Cottbus a train held and I think it was just vacation time.

And the mom said, yeah, those are really bad, bad people.

Never do anything like this, otherwise you will end like those.

And then we were brought into this big prison and there we were in the first so-called transporter cell.

And oh, I don't want to wish this upon anybody.

It was so dirty and they would need a lot in a film to stage a scene like this.

And then we were told by people who worked there, who brought the so-called food in the morning.

Then they said, yeah, you're on the list, you're staying in Cottbus, you, you, you, somebody else was going back on the train the next day to be brought to another prison.

And then they said, ready, be careful when you see this officer, be careful if you see this officer, his name is so and so, but his nickname is Arafat.

And watch out for this officer, you see him right away, he's very tall.

His name is RT and we kind of, the real civilians that had never had anything to do with criminal life, you also saw we still had suits on and what does RT stand for?

And he was actually, as we were told later, proud of this nickname, the Red Terror.

And then I met him the next day when we were brought into our first arrival cells.

And he was yelling at us in order to draw a picture.

I don't know anymore if it was the first or the second day he was looking at us.

You guys are the scum, the ones you call yourself political prisoners.

You are the traitors of our country and stomp in the ground everything that our glorious people have watched, have basically achieved after World War II.

And he said, and if you ask for my opinion, nobody did, he said, my wife is ugly but she is a communist.

You guys are just plain scum and this is how I'm going to treat you.

And then the little bit tougher time started.

Tougher than in the secret service prison where you were psychologically tortured, the so-called white torture.

So they were people like the Red Terror and the 1 nicknamed Arafat would beat you?

You had to watch yourself and there too I must say I've seen fights where criminal prisoners beat up political prisoners.

1 thing that happened, the criminal became some kind of prize.

A day outside with his girlfriend or an extra parcel into the prison and the political prisoner may have lost his next transport to the West because if you have a black eye or broken nose you couldn't go on transport as they put it we can't sell damaged goods into the western world.

So, and I think, I also have not proof that there may have been in my file knows martial arts, is a martial arts instructor, do not engage, might kill you or anything.

I luckily enough got not involved in anything.

And there were many moments when it was about to happen.

And I remember 2 criminals in particular, and they wanted to, and then turned away and didn't do anything.

Back then I thought oh my gosh do I have like cane, Kuai Chang cane and Kung Fu?

Do I have this vibe that I will kill you with my pinky finger if you lay a hand upon me.

But maybe it was something as simple that they were told, don't do anything.

This is, I don't know, special forces, dude.

So I got luckily out of it but I saw others who were beaten up I saw some I was my children showing this in corpus I said you go in the hallway around the corner that in case somebody is coming your way, you do not stand there suddenly face to face.

Because number 1, this is where it happened that guards shoved people down the stairs and then said, oops, somebody had just cleaned the stairs and somebody slipped and fell down.

This is, since you had to, you couldn't walk directly to them, this would have been seen as an attack and as soon as you saw you had to salute even as a prisoner just like in the army weird but you had to salute and that's why you walked very carefully through the walkways and from Red Terror is known up to the end that every now and then he looked by then around because he was already known and some secret officers as it became known later said this guy has to be removed He's damaging too many goods that we try to sell to the West.

But every now and then he took out his huge keychain, a huge iron ring with dozens of keys, and pulled it across somebody's face.

And then, as we were told by insiders, if you say it was this officer then we can't help you anymore.

So you walked very careful, you moved very careful around because you always had to assume next moment something is going to happen and I've seen some scenarios that were not very good.

So we were 3 guys to other political prisoners, we became friends and basically watched our backs and protected us a little bit.

Then you knew there's something behind you and you had to get out of the way.

So those moments, yeah, it was kind of strange, completely unreal.

I can't really imagine that, but I appreciate you describing those circumstances.

Were some of the guards better than others?

And what I mean by better was friendly at all or were they all really aggressive with the prisoners?

There were some who just didn't give a damn.

Really friendlies I didn't encounter there.

For a moment, your question takes me back to the Stasi prison.

The guy who did at the very beginning the photo, it also became known much later that people who worked in the pretrial jail of the Secret Service.

Those were demoted employees of the Secret Service that either had become alcoholics, messed up a big job, and they ended up as guards in the prison.

And this guy always had some alcohol on his breath.

And I still remember when I sat on this famous chair where you have your photo taken front side and then the 45 degree angle.

And he looked at me and said, why don't you smile a little bit?

Now I always have to laugh that he said, why don't you smile a little bit?

There in the Stasi prison, so the pre-trial, there were a few who were a little bit nicer.

But in the big prison, I think there was too much watching also since there was always the war between criminal and political prisoners that nobody really trusted anybody.

It was only the night the Berlin Wall came down, you possibly have read about this already in my book, where for weeks already there was this very strange feeling.

We didn't get newspapers anymore in August.

In August was this huge event where several hundred East German citizens were fleeing across the border that was open for a couple of hours to Austria.

It was the so-called Pan-Hungarian breakfast.

And this is where we were moved out in August of

And then we were told we have to move back in.

And we found out somebody had in the lunchroom painted on the wall Hungary and what happens to us.

It took a while until somebody said it looks like somebody from the outside had told us that lots of East Germans fled in Hungary and crossed the border.

And then came those nights where day and night the gates opened of the prison in Cottbus.

And then a strange kind of peace happened, like a standstill between the criminal and political prisoners, no fights anymore, because they said there's something strange going on.

There every night, every day, there are truckloads of people arrested off the streets and being put, there was also a criminal pretrial prison or jail in the prison of Cottbus.

It was lots within those walls and we said how can they arrest so many people off the streets?

And they had demonstrations out there, those so-called Monday demonstrations.

And then more and more times parts weren't delivered into Cotbus.

I for example worked in a 3 shift system for Pentagon, a camera who built really good cameras were mostly sold to West Germany.

So West Germans in their catalogs were buying those super cheap, but really good cameras, not knowing that they were built in hard prison labor.

Then there was a company in there that apparently produced parts for IKEA in there.

And so more and more times parts didn't come in.

We thought we have night shift and we come out and suddenly the guards the dogs have their muscles removed the guards have their Kalashnikovs around their necks and then in our like a marching block where a whole shift is out of the prison block marching to get to work within the prison.

Suddenly the older ones in here shoot shit history repeats they're going to kill us all they're doing it again They have done it before in German history.

Oh my God, they're putting us up against a wall and a couple of older people and then we were young, We didn't take it serious.

We had to hold a couple of the older ones that thought this is the end.

So we walked into the production hall inside this prison complex And then a civilian came in from the camera company and he was drunk.

We just thought the guards are going to shoot us.

We thought they're going to start sending their dogs because the dogs always had muzzles around and for the first time not.

And now we come in here and this dude is laughing and is drunk And then he asked us, hey guys, guess where I'm coming from?

And we, I don't know, company party, birthday, family party, said no, I was on Kurfürstendamm, I was near the Kartei in West Berlin.

We, yeah, yeah, sure, of course, yeah, sure.

We know they're already here for a long, long time, but they're landing tomorrow, of course." And said, no, no, I'm not joking.

The border is open and we, you're joking, come on, you can't do this with us.

And then he said, yeah, you guys are sitting for wanting to the vest and I was just in a vest.

And there naturally, suddenly the mood turned and he disappeared and we were brought back.

Cells were all locked and then in every cell were between

This is, for us, this is as if you check your lottery ticket in the evening and you have done the big 1.

You have all numbers right and the next morning you wake up and in the newspaper it says the money doesn't exist anymore.

And this on the morning when you just had the big lottery win.

So we were in there, many for actually trying to flee, many for actually having tried to get across the wall and now suddenly it's supposed to be open and everybody can go.

2 days later, My mom had her official visiting appointment in Cottbus and she came and then 1 of the those were so-called teachers, the ones who were supposed to teach us the way of the communism so that we can be reintegrated in the most humane society.

But I think he only had 8 grades in school, so he came to the visitor's table And then he said, yeah, there's just been an amnesty.

Your son is in 3 days or so, he is leaving Cottbus.

Was of course a very different visiting time that time.

And then 3 days later was horrible connection from East Berlin to Cottbus.

My mom had come, I think at 10 in the evening and had to wait until 4 in the morning.

I was supposed to be left out of the building at 4 in the morning and then since you asked if there were any nice guards.

No, in Cottbus there weren't any nice guards, but that morning or that night when we were prepared to leave, knowing that we will get into the vest, the guards have lost everything.

Everybody was laughing about them as if something that is most dangerous to you is suddenly like a cuddly kitten has no power anymore.

So that morning I walked at 4 in the morning out of the prison.

They didn't release us all at once because we could have started a riot outside of the prison, whatever they thought might happen.

Since the opening of the wall, Today we think that was it, the end of the Cold War.

But there were many people, even with more border opening the next days after November 9th, that thought that it will turn around once, like a vent, enough people that don't want to live in East Germany and the West that they will close it up and build the wall double as high so there were serious concerns.

Today most people think November 9th and everything was done.

So people were in fear of making it across many.

So my mom had luckily gotten the last taxi and with somebody else, with the second of the 3 people who walked out, Another 1 was a doctor.

His wife just said, no, sorry, I have my car.

We have to get out here before something happens.

So this young man, the taxi driver on the Autobahn to East Berlin, and this young man, it suddenly, it came all out of him.

He started to talk in Formula 1 speed and at 1 point the driver was from Cottbus, the taxi driver, he was already sniffing.

He said, we knew this prison was in our city.

We knew there were these so-called political prisoners, but we had no idea what was going on in there.

He was crying there on the side of the autobahn.

And it took him a while before he said, okay, I'm all right now.

My mom invited him in East Berlin for a coffee up to the apartment, the young man too.

Then the young man disappeared to his family.

I had to go from Berlin to Rostock to get my papers, where again a friend and Kung Fu student of mine, suddenly the day I arrived in Rostock, suddenly he was where I had grown up, where I had lived previously, with his car drove by and he, oh no way, to meet you here, what a coincidence.

So he said, can I drive you into the city?

How the heck did he even know that I have to get into the city first?

So I just quickly looked to the apartment that I had lived in, somebody else who I knew was living in there now.

So then I made my way to the city and there was the at the city council house was the department for interior yeah all kinds of things to do where you went to apply for your ID and if you move to Rostock and so on.

And I got into the building and back then there weren't any cameras yet and I didn't know.

And in an empty hallway, somebody came out who I had never seen in my life.

And he came in the moment I entered this hallway, and I'd never seen him.

So there must have been from my time arriving in Rostock even though the Berlin Wall was open most people forget that the Secret Service was fully operational until early

So they must have, I don't know, walkie-talkie followed my way through the city and this is how I knew the very moment I step into the building to pick up my ID.

And then I had this, I packed a few things that a friend of mine had, and then I drove to Berlin.

And I don't think even I left the suitcase at my mom's.

And then I walked this famous way through the Palace of Tears and got through with my East German ID, then onto the other platform that we could have never entered before that, since 1961, and then I was in the S-Bahn.

And then the S-Bahn started to drive, and it said Wannsee, a place in West Berlin.

But I thought, okay, no, it can't be that you're now in the free world, that you're now in West Germany, in West Berlin to be.

And I looked out of the S-Bahn, and at 1 point I saw streets from the S-Bahn, and I looked onto the streets, and I remember I thought, I see only real cars, no cardboard cars, no Trabant, no Lada, those are only Western cars.

And then the first station came and it was a West Berlin station and then I got out there at Bahnhof Zoo, the famous train station zoo where the this trade center is with this big Mercedes star on top of the high-rise building and what I've seen in the news before the center of West Berlin Kudamm and all of it I thought I am really in the free world.

I called up a friend didn't even know how to handle a telephone in the West.

Because in the East you put your coin straight into the telephone at the corner there.

I looked where can I put my coin and somebody said, no, you have to place it on this outside thing and shove it sideways into the machine?

This is because of bubble gum that's different here in the West.

You're probably coming from the East and I uh-huh not even knowing how to operate the telephone there.

So called up a friend we met and then so the first things coming by a bakery with

different kinds of buns and I remembered for a flash of a moment, oh my god, how often did I leave before work?

Going to the bakery, I like 6 buns, oh no, buns are already sold out.

Going to the corner store, 1 liter of milk, oh milk hasn't come in yet today.

Going to the newsstand, do you have this newspaper or do you have that magazine?

No, no, no, there were only 4 of this magazine and they're already all gone.

And so how you went from place to place and here suddenly a bakery tells you we have 80 kinds of buns.

Then the friend there said, oh, we're going to this pub.

We went past a liquor store and there it said over 120 different kinds of beer from all over the world.

And so those were the very first images that I thought, oh my gosh, this is really, you can get everything in here.

So a couple of days later, I said, okay, I left my suitcase because I just wanted to get out of the East so we went to checkpoint and yeah to checkpoint Charlie and you could now cross before it was only for military personnel.

And so my West Berlin friends who were also still afraid at the time that the wall might get closed again, they said, okay, go over, go to your mom, and then get your suitcase and come right away back.

So I went over, it was strange going the other way from west to the east through checkpoint Charlie.

So this is really this close of meeting aliens.

So this is how it felt to be able to walk just through there past the MPs and so on.

And I went to my mom, got my suitcase, and then I didn't want to go all the way back to Friedrichstraße, and then I just went.

They had opened the very first subway station as a border point, and I don't know what I was thinking I'd never been drafted to the army in the east but you had gotten already with 18 the ID if you get drafted with your dog tag in it and I had it in this suitcase I don't know why I packed it probably because I thought the wall gets closed into that lots of personal stuff So I got with my mom to this border point there.

That was a hole opened in the East German subway station and then border patrol still checking everything and what happens yes this stupid army ID that I had never needed falls out of the suitcase and he no I have to call somebody you can take this with you And there my mom almost had a cheek, completely flipped out there and started to yell, My son has just come out of prison.

Yes, because this is where you put people that are not of the same opinion as your party and this wall is open and we are free people of an hopefully soon really free world and you let him go now and people start to stop and he felt a little bit he then said okay I have to confiscate this army ID but he may go.

So and this is how I get then via old walkways that never had no 1 had put foot on since

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Ralph - A prisoner in an East German jail (182)