Targeted by the Stasi: revisiting the past | DW Documentary
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- Опубликовано: 22 авг 2024
- The Stasi spied on Silke Orphal and Ilona Seeber for years - after they applied to go to the West. Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, they both look back at their Stasi files.
The Stasi files of Silke Orphal and Ilona Seeber include intercepted letters, official documents and countless reports by spies who meticulously noted everything about their lives, including the turning on and off of lights. When Silke Orphal and Ilona Seeber, who were both ordinary typists at Neues Deutschland - the official newspaper of the Socialist Unity Party - applied to leave the GDR, it was considered scandalous. They were ostracized at work, threatened and subjected to interrogations that lasted hours. What did the experience do to them? How do they look back on that time today? A report by Axel Rowohlt.
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I was in 1989 in East Berlin and it even scared me as a westerner to see how tight security was. I was glad when I was back in the West later that day.
Peter Scheen You must of been really traumatized 😱
@@A_10_PaAng_111 No, not traumatized but it is something that I will not easily forget. At the time I realized how it must have felt for the East Germans.
Luckily, about half a year later the wall fell.
And that felt good.
@@A_10_PaAng_111 must of ? Didd uou nott bovva wiv skoul ?
Thank you for sharing.
@T M the east being like : come over to the dark side, we got cookies.
The Stasi was much smarter than the Gestapo! Early on the East German authorities looked at the Gestapo, and realized that the Gestapo were way too violent to be effective in the long-term. The East German government realized that if the Stasi was excessively violent like the Gestapo, then eventually people will rise up against you for being excessively violent. So in truth the Stasi rarely resorted to outright physical violence, especially compared to the Gestapo. The Stasi realized that psychological warfare against “enemies of the state” was often much more effective than physical aggression. So the Stasi often psychologically threatened enemies of the state by threatening to ruin their life, and ruin the lives of their friends and family for insubordination to the state. Psychological warfare was extremely effective in bringing about obedience to the state in East Germany!
The Stasi only got smarter than the Gestapo in the 1960s.
Then they realized that psychlogical terror against opponents and everyone who showed any signs of independent thinking was more effective than mere physical terror.
In the 1970s and 1980s they also had to take into account that they urgently needed the West German and generally Western currencies
so they tried not to arouse too much criticism for their physical methods of suppression that had been leaked out to the West.
In the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s the Stasi often used brutal physical methods of suppression and terror against opponents in the GDR.
Then they also often kidnapped critics of the SED regime living in West Germany to East Germany..
Very brave and inspiring ladies, thank you for sharing your story.
Hi @Andrew McPhee,
We agree and thank you for watching and commenting.
Best,
The DW Documentary Team
Two incredibly brave and handsome people. Their resilience in the face of such oppression and cruelty is truly inspiring. Bless them both.
I love the way DW makes its documentaries. This is my most favorite RUclips channel followed by Mark Felton.
Mark Felton is definitely my favorite
The Stasi were truly the Gestapo Mk II.
What the Stasi did would turn the Gestapo green with envy
I was watching a documentary on the Stasi years ago. Due to technology they proved even more dangerous than the Gestapo.
The stazi leader Siegfried Rataizick looks like anothony fauci! That's him!
Ok purge boy
@@bootdude7527that bad
Guy gets called in to the NKVD office in Leningrad. In the interview he's confident all is Ok since he's not political and tells the officer he can't be considered a problem. He's informed that the mere fact he's sitting there means he's guilty and the officer points to the people outside walking on the sidewalks and says "They are the ones under suspicion".
We're not that far away from that.
No case without evidence, no conviction without a trial. Innocence is presumed and guilt has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. The NKVD and Stasi are both dead and the states which brought them into being.
In a society with adequate separation of powers, being a suspect does not mean that one is guilty of a crime. With the exceptions of Russia and Belarus, this is how all European countries work. East Germany was a totalitarian police state, where the executive, legislative and judicial power were held by the same entity, the SED, and where Marxism-Leninism was built into the constitution.
@@Tuppoo94 Seperation of Powers yes perfect formula
That elevator is terrifying.
Exactly!
1973, 1976 When I was 19, I visited E. Berlin two times in 1973/1974, and then again in 1976. I was only on the other side of the wall for a few hours on those occasions. It was a real "wake-up call" for me to see what it is like to have your freedom taken from you. Life in E. Berlin looked so bland and lifeless when I was there. It is sickening to see the evil that people and governments can do to innocent people. I lived and worked in W. Germany in 1973/74, and learned a lot about the German people - the good and the bad. It is easy to look at a country and its people and say, how could they do those things - the Nazi era, the Stasi era. The sad reality is that many countries and their people have done and continue to do the same or similar evils.
John - northern California.
I was in East Berlin in August of 1971 as a college student who had been studying classics in Athens.When my student flight from Prague landed in East Berlin, the bus taking us to the western side was thoroughly searched by guards. A few days later, I passed through " Checkpoint Charlie" to spend the day on the eastern side.
Stasi lives in our phones now
Reminds me of the movie "The Lives of Others," one of my all-time favorite movies.
Great film 👍 Why I'm here.
I have a piece of the Berlin wall. My uncle was there when it got torn down and he brought back 2 large chunks (about the size of a dinner plate) one for me and one for my cousin.
Did you eat it yet?
Organized Stalking
Ok purge boy
Exploitation and orgnized intimidation on the sns platforms - its called modern slavery
Bingo
@@tom_bout if you were a real man Hollywood would have already paid your friends and family to destroy you
It's incredible how these women have no specific memories but they're bodies remember and reacts so intensely.
That's called trauma.
In 2011, shortly after the outburst of rioting in London, I was sitting with some friends outside a Starbucks in Hampstead discussing the behaviour of the police. An elderly German man joined in our conversation ... he identified himself as having been a senior officer in the Stasi (who had retired sometime prior to the collapse of the Communist East German Government). The theme of his conversation was that, in many ways, the British police (and the police of other Western countries) had been given powers somewhat similar to those he had when he was a serving officer in the Stasi. Like the Stasi the British police now have the power to arrest people "on suspicion", handcuff them, take them to a police station and lock them in a cell for hours before they are questioned. Present-day journalists, when they refer to serious crimes (like murders) committed in the UK before the police had these powers often claim that the police had "arrested" numerous people (in one case well over a hundred) but were unable to bring anyone to trial. The police didn't "arrest" anyone ... they questioned many people ...invited a small number of them to come to the police station to "help with enquiries" ... those the police suspected had the right to refuse. Back in the 60s British people were warned about the Spanish police in Franco's time ... who had the power to arrest people "on suspicion" . In the event of somebody being arrested by the UK police ... but later released after the police established their innocence and before they'd been taken before a magistrate.. they then had the right to demand to go before a magistrate and be publically declared to be innocent.
Some people might think its OK for our police to have these powers ...because it helps them to catch criminals ... until they find themselves locked in a cell for hours suspected of a crime they know little or nothing about. Even elderly people not infrequently find themselves in such situations ... as a 75 year old friend of mine did when a neighbour accused her a trivial offence she knew nothing about. The police locked her up in a cell for 6 hours ... the reason the police acted this way was because she had a "mental health problem" (depression).
thanx for sharing
Where do you think this problem is the worst currently?
The fact that the whole London is under camera surveillance is disgusting
@@LubaB not sure, but i do know that the usa is rife with it.
All they need today is the ability to hack smart phones as almost every person has one and from that it works as eyes ears and pin point GPS as well as intercepts private calls and messages, the way forward is to pull out those pesky electronic eyes in smart phones and also the mics and just plug in ear phones with a built in mic to make a call and they have no way to listen.
The stasi officers should be tracked down and asked how they feel about what they did. Any remorse?
Most likely not…..evil knows no remorse!
There was another dw documentary. It was basically Ja, ja befehl ist befelh
The sadistic heartless irons would have enjoyed every second working snd doing what they loved
Evil 😈 Criminals
The report does not say when they left. I assume they left through the Friedrichstrasse train station in East Berlin. The guards there were considered exceptionally rude and unpleasant. A followup report would be nice about their experiences in the station and their first impressions of the West.
STASI was the most successful intel service ever existed they literally had full case for every one in the country and that was before the social media and cameras.
And comparable to the USA which keeps mass electronic surveillance on everyone
read the aclu paper EVEN BIGGER, EVEN WEAKER: THE EMERGING SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY: WHERE ARE WE NOW?
Pray you dont become a target of surveillance in the USSA.
Great video, im very thankful. All the best for those two beautiful and brave women!
Excellent documentary
In the end these two beautiful women can smile freely and enjoy a serene life while each and every Stasi member and the toxic people like them painfully decompose both emotionally and spiritually. Maybe the one's who CAN live with themselves aren't human to begin with.
I see lots of ppl like the Stasi in the US in vehicles, since I am targeted. They are soulless, evil and ugggly.
Pity the names of these Stasi agents were made public. I imagine they never faced court for what they did.
During the Iron Curtain there was KGB, Stasi, CIA, FBI, NSG etc. Now it is people themselves sharing via Facebook, Instagram and other social media. Reminds me of Captain America Winter Soldier dialogue of Dr Arnim Zola -
“HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize was that if you tried to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly.”
And in 2020 - here we are again!
It looks like we are on our way.
@@JB-pd3ir Already active. Suppressed online. Presearch bitchute a-war-without-guns
The elevators in the museum are too dangerous.
7:17 that's the longest tram I've ever seen.
the ones in the east were lonGer -.-
ägäinst nazis raf is heel arnny against thing cube rich etc
Who's here after hearing that EA hired a former member of Stasi?
not mea büt indressync ^^
“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” - Mark Twain
The U.S. COINTELPRO gets its tactics from the East German Stassi.
Not even Nazi Germany was like this.
They were too busy gassing and taking care of 6 million deads
Ja doch. Get a feeling what it is like for Americans living under Google in America today. Google hires former Stasi as advisers. 😒
@@geoms6263 🍺
Correct
If you think Google is even on the level of manipulation the Stasi was, you must have a very low opinion of the Stasi. They literally invented their own method of espionage and secret policing.
Hiring a former Stasi agent is not going to be hard seeing as how everyone needs a job. They're not just going to disappear because they don't have a job.
Stasi is in our internet devices
@@hyperion3145 What you’re saying is extremely disturbing. In fact, even more disturbing considering I’ve heard this same talk before from officials in the Bundeswehr saying they’d not have been able to make an army without "former" Nazis in their ranks, because hey, everyone needs a job, *right?*
it happens all the time. I live in Warsaw and I am also observed 24h. A lot like in gangstalking program described by Bryan Tew. Street theatre, conversational scenarios etc.
If you were under surveillance, you wouldnt know about it. If they suspected you knew about it, they would stop. Plus, these days they dont need to have people following you. They can just track you through your phones, credit cards, surveileance cameras, etc.
The Gangstalking crowd is literally just a bunch of schizos.
Massivecarcrash yes, they listen to your phone, but in Warsaw I think they have „boots on the ground”, standing on corners, at „frog jump”. They often use colour code and sometimes I notice their gestures (touching face, chin means object is approaching). They sometimes quote parts of my conversations and text messages. Always someone is taking photo at cash desk when I buy things or when I take ordered food, at the moment when I am opening my wallet and paying
@@Massivecarcrash You are secret service shill written all over you. And for the record it is happening to me in Europe too and I am no schizo.
Hello, this happened with me too. Maybe, some help...
Same here up in Canada!
This still goes on like before, in the " free" West also. We found out because of Edward Snowdon.
It is incomprehensible for people who haven't lived in that! The East Germans had a West Berlin to find refuge in but the rest of the Soviet Bloc countries didn't - Europe didn't any of us so they only escape was the US, 3000 miles away and the great unknown! The Stasi or any other country's fear was if you spoke about escaping - nobody but the fat pigs in the govt/Communist Party had passports and without them no country would let anyone in. State security was about making sure you understood you couldn't get out to especially speak out against the govt - if people were lalowed they would have to figure out which country would accept them and their native country would remain empty (figuratively). My family fled when I was 16 and I never had to earn my living there but I remember my dad losing his job because his sister decided to defect through Vienna and he was a ship captain - what does someone with such a job do?
Angela Merkel was a political govt official in the old East Germany, and that's what she wants to have again. We were told to make friends in the US we'd have to use drugs!
So they didn't leave...what a shame, all they went through!
Angel Merkel is a stasi she now wants to do it through EU!
Nothing change just name it's different
This is nothing compared to today's mobile and internet surveillance.
Very true
Exactly
The big difference between the Stasi and todays LEO's(🐷) is that stasi didnt have computers with near infinite storage capacity. Social media makes the pigs jobs easier.
they're disgusting sub-organism losers. and they're about to get a big taste of their own medicine. :)
Cop-hater SMH
Did the Stasi have access to any Gestapo files ? Just curious ....
Good point.
Probably
@@rudyardwalker9113 I also wonder if any ex Gestapo men might have
ended up working for the Stasi ?
@@chrisbrown8640 Hmm maybe but honestly idk if they would allow Gestapo members to work for them. Most members of the Stasi had communist sympathies and the Gestapo usually persecuted suspected communists but then again their knowledge would've been valuable.
If the Russians had confiscated them then yes I'm sure they did.
no difference today but now it is digital via mobiles and computers and monitoring systems. 5g will be expanded
Husbands and wife's and niebour would spy on each other
And now a new STASI is being establish in Germany. I wonder who they were.....
It is important to have a secret garden.
As always they they they left so many documents as to their crimes
God bless those tireless Stasi officers for standing up to these evil subversive citizens
GFYM
yes i know how they feel, strange thing is i live in modern day UK
The Stasi only got smarter than the Gestapo in the 1960s.
Then they realized that psychlogical terror against opponents and everyone who showed any signs of independent thinking was more effective than mere physical terror.
In the 1970s and 1980s they also had to take into account that they urgently needed the West German and generally Western currencies
so they tried not to arouse too much criticism for their physical methods of suppression that had been leaked out to the West.
In the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s the Stasi often used brutal physical methods of suppression and terror against opponents in the GDR.
Then they also often kidnapped critics of the SED regime living in West Germany to East Germany..
Damn....Democrats were known by so many names....Stasi...Gestapo...
These people were living in a society where they were subjected to psychological terror.
maybe because before they caused of 25 million deaths soviet people alone
It's happening more than ever nowadays, and the psychiquacktric reprisal is there to silence the victims. And 99.99% of the population gaslight the victims.
Still happens to today in 2023. Their names are just different, once evil ~ always evil
*They should consider themselves lucky they weren't around like the other women during the fall of Berlin.*
There're so many governments that watch their citizens closely. North Korea and China come to mind. China is one of the most surveilled countries in the world, I believe they have over 200 million cameras watching everything you do. In the West is not the government the one spying on you, but private businesses through your apps. They know where you are at all times, where you go, what you eat, what you shop, what you're thinking of buying, etc... if it was the government doing that we would be outraged.
US govt does it everyday but you don't know about it
In China your score goes down if you behave immorally, in the UK the authorities promote immorality (porno is free speech), They will turn their attention to you if you believe there are only two genders, but not if you're involved in the systematic abuse of underage girls.
Bit of a difference.
I made this channel to show that this is still going on
so the two women lived together? oh I see.. so that's how it was...
we were born in The STaTe of AusTria
which donT
belong To
Germany we have no such poliTic
system
Infragard, cointelpro 2.0
Happening to me in Burke VA
Me to, Las Vegas, LB and LA,
STASI made the GESTAPO and the KGB look like a bunch of pikers.
Did IBM help them too?
A lot about present gangstalking is on the account GodIsOurProtector. I have a lot of these things happening to me every day
Is that a youtube channel
seek professional help
Same
It's happening to more and more people. Eventually, everyone will watch each other out of compulsion. The government won't even have to pay them. I could already see something like 1984 happen, where people's own children would betray them.
I feel for you, its the same here too in Sweden and South Korea. Totalitarium is evading our modern society. Surveilance and exploitation would satisfy the blood hungry sadists. They can't kill everyone they dont like anymore like in concentration camps because of UN etc. So they push people to mental health crisis and ostracizing just for their self justification and false righteousness. Keep up your faith and hope, there are many of us. Most victims are hopeful hard working democratic citizens. So we clearly know who are the perpetrators.
Did you ever think of adding subtitles instead of dubbing? and if you dub, can you AT LEAST dub what they actually say and then remove the official voices. this is unwatchable, unfortunately, because the topic is very interesting.
Same stuff is going on in the United States. Present day.
A Bernie sticker on a door in a GDR-friendly socialist newspaper.
Bernie Sanders is just a social democrat. It’s rather silly to imply he supports the GDR
@@hiera1917 Americans don’t know what socialism is. They think Bernie is a socialist and the really crazy ones think Obama was a socialist lmao
Both were very pretty when they were young ladies.
the lady wanted out but the she was folded into the church to keep her stuck anyway... never join the church
Why these documentaries never mention the Russians?
Their still at it today 🫣🫡
Google, Stasi, difference?
I do hope these women, on principle, oppose the tyrannical jab mandates.
Thank god for gobachev otherwise the wall might still be there
Thanks
Stasi appeared to be a truly evil organisation.
Just like their previous counterparts.
I thought these two ladies were married until the last 2 minutes!
Did you miss the 'maiden name' hint?
I watched thinking I cannot feel empathy for those two as Germans did far worse to others during WWII. And although these two were certainly innocent of crimes of their ancestors Nazi victims also were innocent people. I grew up in Poland and studied its history and I’m younger than these two but
to me German means mortal enemy never to be trusted. I know German people and I always wonder were their grandfathers in SS ? Did they kill Poles. I always think about that. I don’t hate them but to me that’s all they are -not to be trusted.
Wut? Lol
THE STASI I KNEW WERE A GREAT BUNCH GUYS AND GALS.
You are still being spied on ..
If you were on top of society you would realize that these steps are vital for maintaining your power and the stability of your ideas. Parents do it all the time in the name of everything
The difference is that a parent already has absolute power over their children and few people really care about what they do unless they are beating them.
A country is being undermined constantly and its philosophy and ideology is being constantly challenged by the people in and out of it while. The people typically have absolute power over the state when they mobilize and can find someone else to help them overthrow it. Most often, you can't really overthrow an incompetent parent unless they do something seriously illegal.
Now the EU and the western World Like DDR
Especially China and the UK, where surveillance cameras are everywhere.
The forbidden topics are mass migration and preserving the natural family. This tells you a lot about what the plans are.
Idiotic thing to say. You display a lack of historic knowledge.
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck The Lives of Others.
Read g Stasiland atm
Visit Nepal 2020. "Lets experience heaven " . Someone will amaze with my comment but When you visit Nepal you know why this the case.
What?
How can these places be any good if they still have a dominant indigenous ethnic group with their own language and culture.
Sounds so primitive, not to have endless diversity and debt.
They're so sweet.
Nas mic 13
You had good jobs. Treated well, but because you weren’t allowed to travel, only to approved places, so you apply to leave and are denied then you decide to write a letter to the General Secretary who is the head of state that you don’t approve of his policies…and afterwards what? What did you expect was gonna happen?
Today, if you were to write a letter to the US president, saying you think his policies are unacceptable…you don’t think you would be put on a Secret Service list of people who might be considered a security risk? If you don’t think you would be I have a bridge for sale that I’d like to sell you.
a TV narrator with a speech impediment ( lisp).. great
AOC is making a 'list' too...
Oh, shut up. She’s a social democrat, not a USSR/GDR/ML state-supporting tankie
@@hiera1917
"Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity”. - AOC.
If that's not making a list of your political opponents then i don't know what is.
@@strangelee4400 don't worry about her man after January 6th the feds are taking care of that
Surveillance is very vital if you are organizing a society . Surveillance is necessary. You must know and be able to anticipate things ahead of time and to keep society stable we need control over the population
I hope that was a joke.
@@Dave-nv5rv I am baffled
Don't be a goober
❤️
American college professors would tell these two they were living in paradise. Democrat party can't wait for the workers paradise.
Khadr Trudeau Ok boomer, you posted cringe
Very true
Thuffrin thuckotash
$tatelly $töcking v v
3:45 phenüllie an önnest wömbmähn ^ ^
6:29 think´$ näil klibBer v v
The narrator has a speech-impediment, i think.
yes and it's fine
. Let's see you do the same thing. Il criticize the way you speak.
The stasi are alive and unwell all around you.