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Photo of Rostock courtesey Wiki Commons.. Above: An empty cell block recalls the terror-filled days of Rostock’s former Stasi prison. Government
informers seemingly were everywhere in the city. – Sharon Whitley Larsen photo

munist state in late 1989 and the reunification of East and West inside it’s a fortress with windowless cells and rows of heavy iron
Germany. Here was the home for Rostock and the surrounding doors that make a jarring, clanking sound when opened. Today it
area of the feared and notorious Stasi, the not-so-secret East Ger- is a museum, one of several in the former East Germany that now
man secret police. document the abuses of the communist regime.
The prison is in the middle of the city yet is hard to find. From Its reason for existence was simple: “The main task of the secret
the outside, it looks like an unremarkable office block; from the police was to keep dissenters under surveillance and to persecute

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