In January 1990, two months after the Berlin Wall fell, the agents of the Stasi, or East Germany’s feared State Security Service, began shredding and burning files. They had been spying on their fellow citizens for decades. Communism was now crumbling and they had to destroy the evidence of their evil.
It was too late. On January 15, a throng of angry Germans broke into the offices of the Stasi. As one journalist put it, “The invasion of the complex of almost 50 buildings on Normannenstrasse in East Berlin sent the message to the East German leaders trying in vain to save their crumbling regime that the people would not allow the Stasi to be relaunched in another form, with a more ‘acceptable’ face.”
Heinz Maier was among the first to enter the headquarters. His son was in a Stasi jail for trying to flee the country. “This huge…
