Twenty-four years before: Berlin-Lichtenberg, German Democratic Republic February 1984 ‘We’re talking about children here. We are talking about children here, aren’t we?’ Major Georg Drescher’s question hung in the smoke-laden air. Everyone remained silent while a young woman in a Felix Dzerzhinsky Watch Regiment uniform came in with a tray laden with a coffee pot and cups. The Ministry for State Security – the MfS – of the German Democratic Republic, commonly and resentfully known by the population it purportedly served as the Stasi, occupied an entire city block in the Lichtenberg district of East Berlin. The huge room in which Major Georg Drescher sat was on the first floor of the main Headquarters building on Normannenstrasse. The impressive conference room was dressed in oak panelling with a large map of Germany – East and West – dominating one wall. Next to the map was a large mounted escutcheon of the Ministry seal, the motto of which promised that the Stasi was ‘the sword and shield of the Party’.
