THE EAST GERMAN PRISON SYSTEM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-02771R000100300015-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 3, 1998
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: April 1, 1959
• Content Type: REPORT

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THE EAST GERMAN PRISON SYSTEM
April L959
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When the Russian troops marched into Germany there immedi-
ately began a wave of mass arrests and kidnapings ordered by
the Soviet Secret Police (MVD). The entire territory lived
under a veritable reign of terror. The Soviets seized every-
body whom they thought might be dangerous. The most baseless
denunciation was sufficient for an arrest and almost certainly
a long sentence. For instance, in one city a man denounced a
certain Otto Schmidt as having been guilty of war crimes. The
Russians thereupon arrested every Otto Schmidt in the city
and subjected these unfortunates to weeks of brutal questioning
in an attempt to find the accused Schmidt.
For the West it is extremely difficult to grasp the
fundamentals on which Communist justice is based. In the
Marxist-Leninist view, justice, secret police and the military
are nothing but the instruments of the proletarian dictator-
ship. A man is judged by his class and the degree to which
he has adapted himself to socialist society. Thus, a Communist
takeover of any country by force is followed by a wave of
terror in which opponents are liquidated or imprisoned.
This has been explained clearly by M. Latsis, Chief of
the Cheka in 1918, who declared:
""We are working for the extirpation of the
bourgeoisie as a class. It is not necessary to
show that this man or that worked against the
interests of Soviet power. When you arrest a man
the first thing you have to ask him is to what
class he belongs, what his education was and what
his profession is. These questions shall decide
the fate of the person in question. That is the
quintessence of the red terror."
Legality in a Communist state, writes Gerhard Finn in his work
The Political Prisoners of the Soviet Zone, is never a. question
37-Justice nd is only one 77-brute f orce expressed in terms
of slogans.
In East Germany, the Soviet roundup began in April 194
when General Besarin, Commandant of Berlin, issued an order
that all members of the National Socialist Party, the Gestapo,
gendarmerie, prison administrations and all other State offices
must report to the local commanders.
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In the next few months mass arrests numbering in the
thousands followed throughout the entire territory and prov-
isional concentration camps were opened in scores to handle
the flood. Regular concentration camps, mostly taken over
from the Nazi system, were functioning in the fall of 1945.
These were such notorious places as Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen
and Jamlitz; however, they proved to be insufficient to take
care of the vast number of prisoners. Prisoner of war camps
of Neubrandenburg and Muehlberg also were opened in addition
to the regular prisons of Torgau and Bautzen. From these places
thousands were deported to the Soviet Union to work on labor
projects.
In 1949 there were 43 concentration camps and prisons
functioning in the Soviet Zone and the total number of pris-
oners was well over 44,000. Most of the large-scale Communist
action was directed against groups who were considered to be
"anti-democratic elements." A treat many were members of the
various political parties which be an to reorganize shortly
after the war. During 1946 and 1947, the first anti-Communist
groups began to make their appearance and tried to work against
the SED. However, they were not trained in conspiratorial
work and they were thus an easy prey for the agents of the MVD.
The Russians introduced a system known as "chain arrests"
which were mostly directed against former members of the Ger-
man Army. When a man was arrested, he was obliged to give
the names of all those with whom he had been associated during
the war on the Eastern Front. These were then also rounded
up. As a result, whole companies and platoons of veterans
were soon in the Soviet Zone camps and prisons. Many were shot
or deported to the Soviet Union. The remainder were sentenced
to 25 years forced labor. Over the years quite a number were
released, but there are undoubtedly still many serving time.
Arrests on purely political grounds began in 1949 when
many groups started to work against the Communist regime
either politically or through passive resistance to its orders.
There was a new wave of mass arrests in which not only those
implicated were arrested, but also their friends and relatives
on the theory that association proved guilt. The sentences
were uniform--25 years hard labor.
Prison Organization
The prisons are no longer under the command of the military.
Each is now headed by a civilian director who is responsible
for the organization of his unit. Under him are a number of
deputies. One is the Deputy for Political Work on whom devolves
the responsibility for the political indoctrination and train-
ing of all those in the installation. Depending on the size
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of the unit, he has a number of assistants. These assistants
carry on their work among the guard personnel and as far as
possible among the inmates, some of whom are recruited to spy
on the political views of their fellow prisoners.
The political deputy also is supported by a secretary of
the SED and by a secretary of the Free German Youth group.
In the bigger installations these two secretaries also have
deputies who maintain the closest possible contact with the
guard and warden personnel.
The Director also has a General Deputy who is responsible
for the technical education and training of the wardens. He
may represent the Director in all matters and oversees the use
made of the operative staff that is responsible for the physi-
cal security of the installation. The Production Department
regulates the work done by the prisoners.
Surveillance Apparatus
This entire system is under the over-all surveillance of
the Ministry of State Security. The Ministry maintains in
every prison or camp a number of its own officers who are res-
ponsible for watching the conduct of the members of the People's
Police and the political orientation of the prisoners through
a system of stool pigeons.
The Ministry attempts to recruit the services of those
prisoners who are about to be released through various types
of pressures or inducements. Those who agree to work for the
Ministry are rewarded with good living quarters and a job when
they leave prison.
This approach does not appear to have been too successful,
however, since most of the prisoners agree to work for the
Ministry only out of fear that if they refuse their sentences
might be prolonged. Once on the outside, their collaboration
has proved to be of little value.
Arrest and Kidnaping Techniques
Arrests on political grounds are usually carried out
by the Ministry of State Security. To avoid publicity, such
arrests are carried out as unostentatiously as possible. When
the danger exists that a suspect might be tipped off to the
fate awaiting him and might flee, he is arrested at home or
at his place of work, but this is seldom done since it attracts
attention. The favorite method is the arrest on the open
street. The victim is usually arrested on his way to work
or on a visit to a public building to which he has been summoned
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on some pretext. On being apprehended, he is quickly pushed
into a waiting police car and driven to a quiet street where
he is forced to don a pair of dark glasses. Then, by a round-
about way he is driven to the Ministry office. The arrest on
the street and the suspect's sudden "disappearance" is done
to prevent others from being alerted, since it is the Ministry's
contention that suspects seldom work alone.
As a result of this system, the People's Police will learn
only later of the arrest since they are not trusted by the
Ministry. Thus, it is usually true when the People's Police
tell desperate relatives that they do not know where the victim
is or if he has been arrested. Even the State Prosecutor's
office is only told later of the arrest whereupon a pro forma
warrant is sworn out and handed to the suspect for signa uTre.
While the relatives of the arrested person find themselves
faced by a wall of silence, the suspect is caught in the grip
of the inhuman machinery of the Communist gestapo. He is
completely isolated from the outside world and is physically
and psychologically maltreated. This process is known as
"softening up" in Ministry jargon. The State's role is a
relatively easy one since it does not have to prove the suspect's
guilt. It is up to him to prove himself innocent.
Kidnaping
Because it is harder for the Ministry to get their hands
on a man when he does not live in the Soviet Zone, they fre-
quently spend months making the most careful plans for a kid-
naping in West Berlin or on the territory of the Federal Repub-
lic. Agents are ordered to report on the smallest details
they can find out about the victim's way of life--who his friends
are, where he eats, his amusements and his routine movements
about the city where he lives.
Two methods are used to get hold of a person, trickery
or force. Trickery is the favorite method since this is apt
to arouse little notice. Various excuses are tried to get
him to make a visit to East Berlin--he receives a message from
a "friend" who is allegedly in great trouble and must see him
at once, or he receives a telegram saying that a close friend
or relative is gravely ill and must see him.
Kidnaping by force is used when the Ministry is confident
that trickery will not work or if they believe the victim
might be forewarned. In this type of kidnaping the victim is
frequently induced to have a drink with some chance acquain-
tance and this usually turns out to have been drugged. He is
then quietly whisked away by some convenient method of trans-
portation into the Soviet Zone.
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When none of these methods can be made to work, the Min-
istry resorts to open, forceful kidnaping. This calls for a
complete knowledge of the victim.'s habits and very careful
planning since the risk of exposure is great. Here, accomplices
are of no use and there must be recruited an arrest ""commando"
of four or five men who will attack the victim on the street,
throw him into an automobile and then drive in wild flight to-
wards the East zone. All persons who are kidnaped in West
Berlin or in the Federal Republic are taken to Investigation
Headquarters of the Ministry at Berlin-Lichtenberg.
Investigative Arrest
After his arrest, the victim is under the authority of
Department IX of the District Administration of the Ministry
of State Security. On arrival, he is forced to undress and
his clothes are very carefully examined. He is completely
cut off from contact with the outside world and can receive
no news from his relatives. Whenever he is taken from his
cell for questioning, the guard rings a bell and all the corri-
dors are immediately cleared so that none of the other pri-
soners may learn the victim's identity. The prisoner is not
allowed to shave and at night he must sleep with his face
turned towards the door and his hands outside the covers. A
light burns all night in the cell.
If the victim shows signs of being obdurate, pressure is
turned on to "soften" him up. The prisons have special instal-
lations for this purpose and the guards have been given special
training in their use. The most simple one is the water or
"ice" cell. This is a completely bare cell whose floor is
covered to a depth of several inches with ice cold water, in
which the prisoner must either stand or sit. Usually, he is
left in this cell until he has agreed to sign a confession.
Another method is the sweat box. This is a tiny, super-heated
cubicle in which the prisoner can neither sit nor stand up-
right. He is given very salty food to eat and is then shut
in the box which is brought to tropical heat.
Grounds for Arrest
The grounds for arrest in the East German Republic were
formulated in such a manner that virtually any act may be
interpreted as being "anti-State" in one form or another.
The list is headed by treason and contact with any counter-
revolutionary group. Espionage is divided into military nand ""
economic types. A man also may be arrested for acts of terror
against members of the Soviet Army or for carrying on any kind
of anti-State propaganda or agitation.
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Any chance remark of criticism of the Pankow regime or
the Soviet Union can be construed as anti-State propaganda.
Another heading is "actively working against the working
classes." This, again, can be construed to mean anything the
authorities may want it to mean. A man also may be arrested
for not having reported any knowledge he might have of counter-
revolutionary activities. In effect, no man is safe from
arrest if the State wants to deprive him of his liberty.
East Germany Takes Over
The administration of the prisons and the judicial system
of the Soviet Zone were turned over to the East Germans in
1950. However, this did not mean that the Soviets no longer
took an interest in the continuance of arrests. To the con-
trary, the arrests and the 'trials" continued since the Russians
insisted on handling everything that came under the conven-
iently broad heading of "espionage of all kinds"" and "formation
of illegal groups." The Soviets played a considerable role
in the thousands of trials which followed the 1953 revolution,
but they tried to stay out of the picture after the declara-
tion of the "sovereignty" of the East German Republic.
Thousands in Jail
The main body of political prisoners in 1950 was composed
of those who had run afoul of the Russians. Nearly all of
them had been sentenced to terms of 25 years forced labor on
one of the above-mentioned charges.
However, this system of wholesale arrests by the hun-
dreds failed to create a climate in which the Communist Party
could hope to make many recruits and Pankow realized that
something had to be done. Thus, in 1954 they got the Russians
to agree to an amnesty which resulted in the freeing of 6,143.
On October 19, 1954, the Soviet. High Commissioner informed
the Minister of Justice of East Germany that henceforth all
prisoners on the Republic's territory who had been sentenced
by the Soviets would be considered as being under the juris-
diction of the Republic. The German authorities thereupon
reviewed all Soviet sentences, most of which had been maximum
terms, and reduced them to shorter ones. In the summer of 1955
there was yet another amnesty and for the first time the poli-
tical prisoners were told how much longer they had to serve.
In December 1955 and January 1956 a further group of nearly
3,000 was released.
Evidence Destroyed
The Soviet authorities, however, had taken away with them
whole truck loads of papers and documents pertaining to the
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arrest and trial of thousands of prisoners who were, conse-
quently, held in jail without any documentary evidence.
To create some semblance of a system, 3,400 of these
prisoners were brought from various Soviet installations to
Waldheim, Saxony, where new evidence was manufactured against
them. So-called courts were set up which processed 120 people
a day. The order was given to "get as much information as
possible" from the prisoners since in most cases all that was
available was a paper saying the person in question had been
arrested by the MVD. To obtain more material, the prisoners
were handed long questionnaires which they had to complete in
addition to giving a detailed account of their careers and life
story.
In drawing up the new charges based on this material,
the authorities were ordered to be careful to include every-
thing they could find that would be detrimental to the cause
of the prisoner. The finished case, the order said, should
be of such a nature that any court would automatically hand
down the highest possible sentence.
Communist Trials
These "trials" began on April 21, 1950, and. in order to
handle them, 21 special courts were set up in the Chemnitz
judicial area. Ten cases were heard each day in each court
and a maximum hearing time of one hour was allotted. Some,
however, only lasted 15 to 20 minutes despite the fact that
sentences of up to 15 years in the penitentiary were handed
out. The hearings naturally were not public and the accused
were only told the preceding day that their trial was coming
up.
The trials were conducted in the following manner. After
the president of the tribunal had opened the proceedings with
a brief address, the prosecutor read the accusation and the
court heard his evidence. Thereupon the prosecutor made his
plea. After that, the prisoner was allowed to say a few words
if he wished. The courtroom was then cleared and the judges
held their "consultation." This was a complete farce since
the verdict had already been drafted the day before and the
only element still open to question was the length of the
prison term.
The prisoner was then called back and the presiding
judge gave a short explanation for the sentence. The accused
was told that his sentence was to count from the day the
People's Police had taken over the administration from the
Russians. He also was told that he could appeal, not against
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the facts, but only against the form of judicial procedure.
Thirty-two were sentenced to death, although six of them
were finally reprieved. The executions took place in the night
of 3-4 November 1950, in the most primitive manner in a cellar
of the Waldheim Prison. The condemned man was made to stand
on a chair while the rope was tied around his neck. The chair
was then pulled away. The victim's eyes were not blindfolded
so that he was able to see the corpses of those who had been
executed before him lying in a corner of the room.
Property Confiscated
Most of the sentences handed out were accompanied by the
confiscation of the prisoner's property. As a rule this adden-
dum to the sentence was superfluous because the seizure of
the victim's furniture and apartment had usually been made a
few days after his arrest. In many cases the prisoners wife
was arrested and kept in prison for a few weeks. When she
was released she returned home only to find it occupied by
Party faithful.
As a relative of "an enemy of the State" any attempt at
redress was out of the question. Relatives usually were so
terrified at what had happened that they dared not take any
official steps.
Political Trials After 1950
Until 1955 most of the political trials were "group"
trials. The first "enemies" against which the Pankow regime
took action were the Jehovah's Witnesses, thousands of whom
were arrested in late 1950. The pretext for action against
them was a meeting the organization held in West Berlin to
protest against measures that had-been announced preventing
them from exercising their faith. In accordance with a ver-
dict of October 4, 1950, the activities of the leaders of the
Witnesses were qualified as "war-mongering" in accordance with
Article 6 of the Constitution. This meant that the sect could
no longer practice its faith. In the prisons members of the
Witnesses were held apart from other prisoners. According to
fellow prisoners, they were examples of courage in their resis-
tance to the persecutions of their guards.
The juridical system of the Soviet Zone was only intended
to be a tool to further the political aims of the SED. For
this purpose there were a number of show trials against the
Youth Community, a church group, against the Hotel and Inn
Keepers of the Baltic Coast, etc. These groups could only hope
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that the Party's policy might happen to be a mild one at the
time the trial came up. But this was seldom the case since
as a rule these trials were held at a time when the Party, for
political reasons, was waging a propaganda campaign against
the accused or his group.
The trials were not only directed against the lowly.
Many high officials also had to stand trial. For instance,
Minister for Trade and Welfare Karl Hamann got 10 years;
Minister of the Interior Georg Dertinger, 15 years; State
Secretary Dr. Helmut Brand, 10 years; Central Committee member
Paul Merker, seven years; and professor of Sociology at Hum-
boldt University Wolfgang Harich, 10 years on a variety of
trumped-up anti-State charges.
The Prisons
Today, the entire penal. system of the East Zone is control-
led by the People's Police. Most of the guards and wardens have
had experience in Nazi concentration camps and were thus con-
sidered "specialists." Earlier, treatment in the prisons was
brutal in the extreme with daily gauntlet-running and beatings.
However, since the 1953 uprising there has been some improve-
ment.
The demonstrators of the 17 June uprising as well as those
of Posen and Hungary tried to storm the prisons and free the
prisoners. However, they were successful only at Goerlitz
and at some of the smaller prisons. Nevertheless, June 17 was
a day of success for the political prisoners throughout the
Soviet Zone. With few exceptions, the guard personnel under-
went a change in attitude towards their wards. Those who had
previously spent their time beating the prisoners suddenly
refrained and quite a few were even polite in addressing the
prisoners. In some cases the guards attempted to get character
references to the effect that they had always done their job
"`with decency."
However, the uprisings caused the authorities to re-exa-
mine the physical security of their installations. As a
result, machinegun emplacements were built in front of the
prisons and existing watchtowers were reinforced. In many cases
emplacements were built on the roofs of the prisons in case of
another attack from the outside.
The Prisoner's Life in Jail
No distinction is made in the jails between political
and criminal prisoners. The hair of both is cut very short.
They have a number and wear the usual prison garb, usually
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cast-off police uniforms. After several weeks spent in soli-
tary confinement, the prisoner is at last allowed to partici-
pate in the regular prison routine. He must learn to salute
all wardens by taking off his cap and standing at attention.
The prisoner is now allowed to correspond with his rela-
tives and receive one letter a month. Until 1955 each prisoner
was allowed to receive one food parcel every three months,
but this has now been forbidden.
All the prisoners have to work and a number of them are
used on building and construction projects outside the prisons.
For instance, 4,000 were used to work on the jet plane runways
and submarine pens that were recently constructed on the island
of Ruegen. Prisoners serving life sentences are rarely let
out of their cells.
Those who do the heaviest work get a little more food
than the others, but the usual ration is as follows: 1,380
grams of fat, 1,550 of sugar and 2,000 of meat a month. Each
day the prisoner gets 30 grams of jam and fat, 35 grams of
sugar and 600 grams of bread. In addition there is a distri-
bution twice weekly of 80 grams. of sausage. The warm midday
meal consists of one liter of a soup-like stew. Boiled pota-
toes are served only on Sunday. The heavy worker gets a 50
gram distribution of fat every two days, plus a slice of
sausage and 20 grams of sugar. The prisoner who is confined
to his cell for some misdemeanor gets only coffee, dry bread
and soup every fourth day.
Number of Prisoners
At present there is no exact estimate of the number of
political prisoners in the East Zone, although it is known
that in 1953 there were more than 25,000. People are being
arrested and some freed every day so that it is impossible to
keep a check. Nevertheless, there are several thousands rot-
ting away behind the walls and barbed wire of some 60 prisons
and work camps in the East German Republic.
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