Following a recent article in Countryman's Weekly, I couldn't resist sending a letter to the editor which is quoted below.
I doubt that Baroness Mallalieu has any knowledge of recent German history (Matt David’s article “The Baroness who fights for fox hunting”, The Countryman’s Weekly 25 November). If she did she wouldn’t link a democratically elected government to the secret police of the communist dictatorship of the GDR. This comparison is disgraceful and, as a German, I am deeply offended by it.
I have seen the conditions under which opponents of the regime were treated in the remand prison of the Stasi in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. I was shocked and deeply moved when the guide, a former detainee, explained that he was tortured and held in solitary confinement.
The GDR dictatorship who built the Berlin Wall and the heavily guarded and fortified “death zone” at the inner German border was responsible for over 1,000 deaths.
In linking the British government with the Stasi Baroness Mallalieu insults these victims and others who were tortured by the Stasi and other sidekicks of the GDR regime and makes a mockery of the torture they suffered from.
She might want to visit the website of Memorial Berlin-Hohenschönhausen to read the eyewitnesses’ accounts of former detainees (http://en.stiftung-hsh.de/index.php). She might also want to consider donating to the Memorial.
