Guillotine Education

By Lilian Price

Guillotine Education details the abuses practices of the former East German State Security (Stasi) as experienced by border guard Manfred Smolka. His temporary cellmate Klaus Schmude recounts the harrowing tale of the young official disillusioned by the shocking realities of a rogue regime. Pacing his cell, Smolka is stunned by the death sentence he has just been handed. His attorney already knows that the decision by the kangaroo court is a foregone conclusion, yet he still encourages him to appeal the decision to the highest authorities in the land. Smolka then reflects on the circumstances of his illegal apprehension on West German soil, and his hellish months of detention marked by sleep deprivation and seemingly endless good cop/bad cop interrogations. The interplay between the present and the past continues as he recalls his upbringing and the ideological warfare employed by his East German trainers in preparing him for his career as a border guard. It is when he begins to question the validity of Stalinist ideology and its brutal practices that he develops a crisis of conscience. He concludes that his only acceptable choice is to escape to the West, which he successfully manages to do. Upon crossing the border, he is detained and questioned by West German authorities. They, in turn, hand him over to the Americans, who consider him a particularly valuable source of information about East German border installations. His kindly Jewish American interrogator soon releases him to enjoy his newly acquired freedom after making a brilliant connection between the brutalities of Hitler’s national socialism and Stalinist totalitarian socialism. These brutalities included the occasional beheading of political prisoners with the identical guillotine used by both regimes. After a year of blissful freedom in West Germany, Smolka decides to rescue his wife and daughter from the GDR. Little did he realize that this decision would lead to such fateful consequences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781640279124

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Guillotine

Education

Lilian Price

Copyright © 2017 Lilian Price

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2017

ISBN 978-1-64027-911-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64027-912-4 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Preface

In this book, the author has successfully portrayed events in recent modern history in a thrilling and heart-wrenching manner.

Klaus Schmude, himself a long-term prisoner of the SED, dramatically depicts Manfred Smolke’s fate. The reader is directly and grippingly confronted with the interrogation techniques of the former State Security Service of the now defunct GDR.

This period piece also documents the terrible hijacking of the former GDR’s judicial system by the SED. The SED Politburo commanded and the judiciary meekly followed this system: Manfred Smolka was to be executed for educational purposes. With horror, the reader thus follows the dramatic fate of a political murder.

As a temporary cellmate of the condemned, the author succeeds in portraying Manfred Smolka in a sensitive manner. The author uniquely paints a convincing and compassionate portrait of this victim of Communist dictatorship. This book is a tribute to Manfred Smolka and simultaneously unveils a segment of German history that is hideously true.

May this gripping tale help to promote peace in our land and find understanding and sympathy for the victims of the forty-year-long SED dictatorship. At the same time, the reader can learn of the fate of one of its young victims.

This book was written with tears and great sincerity.

Eberhard Wendel

Berlin, 1992

Introduction

This book is no book in the usual sense of the word. It is the cry of a tortured soul. Manfred Smolka, whose father had perished in the war, was exiled from his old homeland and had found a new one in the GDR, a.k.a. the Eastern Zone. Though still a child himself, he became the primary breadwinner of the family and tried to adjust to life in his new homeland. Initially he succeeded, working first as a laborer and farmhand and later establishing himself as a border guard. But he had some major flaws: he was honest and wanted to preserve the ability to think for himself—so it was just a matter of time before he would collide with the system of socialist realism and its lackeys… and he opposed the system to the point of giving up his career in favor of a pursuit where he could just be himself. However, he was a renegade, and they opposed him at every turn, so he pursued the only avenue left at his disposal: to get away from them and escape to the West. Once again, he went into exile.

After adjusting to his surroundings in new homeland, he wanted his family to join him, but they set a trap for him.

This book is an attempt to reconstruct what he experienced when he was shot at on Western soil, dragged back to the GDR, and then suffered through the hellishness of State Security Service imprisonment, only to be condemned to death after a Stasi show trial.

It is an attempt to relive the torment he endured before this brutal sentence was carried out. This book is the cry of his tortured soul and an attempt to allow him, the condemned, to speak for himself one last time. It is a book full of emotional outbursts, full of hope as well as despair. The tormented one could never quite grasp what was happening to him—he had been condemned to death and he didn’t know why…

But we can and must comprehend it today! He can no longer speak—but we can!

The deep despair he felt in facing this brutal sentence needs to be expressed in his name and on his behalf as an indictment against an ideology, against a system that glorified itself and was determined to create a new and better world. This world’s alleged noble aim was built on terror, hate, and lies, leaving behind an ineradicable trace of unspeakable suffering, blood, and tears…

Manfred Smolka was one of countless victims of a system that extended from St. Petersburg to Moscow to the farthest reaches of Siberia, over half of Europe to Berlin and to the smallest village in Mecklenburg or Thuringia to every family and individual over decades.

This book is a small tribute to one who has no grave, no final resting place, and also represents the many victims who lost their lives on this violent and false path that was to lead to a "classless society.

The Author

I.

Erfurt,

the 5th of May, 1960

Condemned to death!

To death…

Manfred Smolka paced back and forth in his narrow cell. Each heartbeat repeatedly hammered out Condemned to death! At times it droned and crackled like a thunder clap, then again softly, almost inaudibly, a mere whisper like the hissing of a snake. From incalculable distances deep within this Condemned to death enveloped him, resounding in all conceivable forms of human communication.

And yet it all seemed so unreal, as though on a movie screen in which he himself played a role, or like a nightmare that had taken hold of his senses from which he should soon be waking up and breathing a sigh of relief.

However, this Condemned to death was too immediate and painful not to be an inevitably raw and naked reality. There it was again, the icy voice that expressed itself in the cold chamber, in the chamber with so many hostile and disdainful glances staring at him for so many days already.

(At least that’s how it seemed to him, but surely there were compassionate and horrified glances as well when this Condemned to death resounded throughout the chamber from above, from the seat that showed no mercy.)

Was this then the conclusion to these terrible days in which his entire young life was unveiled, or were they years? Time seemed to stand still with the repeated humiliation, fainting, and the many days in court, in which the truth was to be investigated. Instead, he had been denigrated and forced into silence.

Smolka is a subversive element and has forfeited the right to speak here, said the judge, who was supposed to rule justly.

Then they came, all those falsely construed accusations, those damnably hollow phrases. They rushed past him like a cold draft, but they all ended with the screaming, whispering, droning sounds that drowned out all else: Condemned to death!

He broke down when this cruel and merciless sentence echoed in the chamber. It seemed to him that someone cried out from a distance, I am innocent. I’m begging for my life! Then he heard nothing more than a soft rustling that seemed to come from a deep darkness.

Two aides dragged him back to his cell, holding him up on each side.

Gradually he came to. His court-appointed attorney, a powerless judicial representative, was with him and had been hired by the state to give at least a semblance of justice to the whole perverse drama.

He was given the privilege of a short visit with his attorney for the very last time.

I promise you, Mr. Smolka, that I will do everything in my power to fight on your behalf. He attempted to encourage him although he knew for certain that he was powerless, that he had no possibility of fighting for him. The court had merely declared what was already determined well in advance, having been decided in the circles of the almighty politocracy. The trial was just a farce, a Kangaroo Court, held for the mandatory observers, the People’s Army, the Border Patrol, and Stasi officers, before whom justice was paraded but who were primarily there to witness how the Worker and Farmer’s Power dealt with traitors that allowed themselves to fall into the hands of the enemy of the state. To a certain extent as a warning: "See how those who fall into the hands of the enemy of the state and betray the worker class are forced into espionage by the imperialists.

"But our arm is long—we’ll get him, and his just punishment will be carried out.

And our punishment for traitors is harsh. Take a good look and learn from this!

Before the trial, the attorney had already found out from a Stasi officer whom he had known for some time that the death penalty had been predetermined for Smolka by the very top brass. So even before the deadly game, he had already known that everything was useless, that all was already lost for Smolka.

What other choice did he have but to play along with those perverse theatrics? He had been selected as a defense counsel for his client and had to pretend that he was defending him.

And he even wanted to defend him, especially after meeting him.

He had even anticipated the interrogation protocols, documents obtained by Stasis blackmail. According to them, Smolka was guilty, but the attorney also sensed the manner in which they had been extracted.

When, however, this wreck of a human being was introduced, he knew it…

Never would he forget the first time this pitiful skeletal figure stood before him trembling with flickering eyes. Oh my god, what must this human being have suffered?

Yes, he had defended him. He defended him, although he was fully aware that it was all in vain. But he at least wanted to feel that he was defending him and that Smolka felt that he was defending him, that he wasn’t alone, that there was still someone at his side who believed in him and was fighting for him. At least he wanted to do that.

And now this sentence. He had known it was coming, that it had to come…

And yet he had to keep giving him hope. He had encouraged him after Smolka had broken down for the first time after hearing the prosecutor request the death penalty. His attorney had lied to him, saying that it was merely a request and far from being a sentence, although there were only a few days separating the two. Until now.

But for Smolka they were still a few days, a few days with a least a bit of hope, a few days in which complete despair didn’t have to be the complete master of his tortured soul.

And now the sentence…

He had to be with him again and make him believe that this was far from the end, that there was still hope.

Yes, Mr. Smolka, I will fight for you and even if I have to scream it out to the whole world. For the time being, I have submitted an appeal. The sentence is thus not yet in force but will be decided by the highest court. From personal experience, I know that the sentence is usually reduced, he lied to him.

Do you really think so, sir, do you believe that? asked Smolka with a faint glimmer of hope.

Yes, of course, it’s usually like that.

And in my case, sir, isn’t it true that everything needs to be reexamined to determine my innocence? I really believe that this court here was prejudiced against me, don’t you agree?

But of course, Mr. Smolka, of course, he continued to lie. The victim was actually right: this court was obviously prejudiced. It couldn’t be anything other than prejudiced, just like the Supreme Court would be, had to be…

Naturally, he also hoped that something extraordinary would occur, some miracle, a pardon at the last minute—or an exchange? But this hope was so vague. And yet, for the sake of this poor, guiltless being, he also wanted to believe in this miracle, even if only to give him some hope in a more believable manner. Yes, to create hope—that was the only thing he had done for him the entire cruel time of the trial. He was so ashamed.

But at least to give some hope, like a doctor does with his terminally ill patient, although he knows precisely that death…

Oh, how horrible the comparison—yet so terribly true.

Yet perhaps the doctor also hopes for a miracle? He took leave of his client.

Well then, Mr. Smolka, I must leave now. You know that all is far from being lost, so don’t despair! He shook his hand and squeezed it tightly.

Smolka didn’t want to let go, as though he sensed that that would be the very last human hand to be extended to him.

Then he was alone and cried bitterly at first, as though he were crying for all the injustice in the world.

He finally pulled himself together after many hours, and the seed of hope sown by his attorney began to germinate.

Surely the Supreme Court would acknowledge his innocence and that the Stasi’s testimony had been obtained by blackmail. It would make a different decision from this one, where his objection wasn’t even taken note of and where he was even accused of slandering the State Security Service.

Oh, he was slandering them?

Could they even be slandered? Would it even be conceivable to make up and top the realities experienced in their custody? He didn’t even have the desire to make anything up. He only wanted the truth. To be believed in court, to at least be heard so that his signed statement not be accepted as proof of his guilt.

O my God, forgive me, I would have confessed everything, everything they wanted to hear. I would have signed anything, even a pact with the devil, just to bring an end to that time, those many horrifying months. Just to have human contact, to talk to someone, not to feel fear on a daily basis, not to be humiliated and scorned day after day. I just wanted to escape, to escape from the insanity-producing solitude, from that torture chamber of the soul. Just to finally end that horrible period. Anything, I would have signed anything. I had reached my limit, I just couldn’t go on. O my god, why didn’t they believe me? What’s in those protocols isn’t true, it just isn’t true. They just have to believe me!

II.

Stasi Detention Berlin (August 1959–April 1960)

Memories of it flooded over him again, the terrible time spent in Stasi custody with its perverse, sadistic, and devilishly clever system designed to elicit confessions.

The frequent gnawing hunger pangs and thirst were bearable enough. They were his constant companions to which he had grown accustomed. They were part of his daily routine, sources of hope, proving he was still needed when he received his daily sustenance.

Insanity would surely precede starvation. Yes, that was probably the inevitable goal if the given alternative were not selected: declarations and confessions, declare and confess everything they wanted to hear. They had their preconceived ideas they didn’t deviate from. The only possibility was conforming to their sham, their predetermined construct, by being kneaded, hammered, molded until he either acquiesced and/or broke down.

Manfred Smolka chuckled bitterly to himself. It took a while to finally grasp it: it was no different here than on the outside: conform to the predetermined mold or break down. That was the system as a whole. Here inside was just the model for it.

No, on the outside there was one more possibility: he had already exhausted it—the saving escape. He had managed to do it…

Sorrowfully, he thought about that short-lived feeling of freedom, that first taste and enjoyment of new life and hope and the very cruel end to that glimpse of freedom.

How could all this have happened? Why was he here, here in the clutches of the State Security, totally at their mercy?

During the first few days in this house of emotional torture, nothing occurred except what he had already amply experienced for the last three days following his arrest: humiliation and being treated like a hardened criminal.

Being screamed at, kicked, and mocked.

When they had shot at him and dragged him across the border to the East, he could only imagine what awaited him—that much he already knew about them.

They had no regard for his wounded leg. They did provide him with emergency care. But all too often, they accidentally bumped up against the wound, causing him to scream in pain. He even understood them: to them he was a monster, an abomination. He had done the worst thing a person could do: he had abandoned the Fatherland of the Worker and had placed himself in the hands of the enemy of the state. From the perspective of their hate-filled ideology, that was the worst crime of all. He had lived long enough under this ideology, had been raised by it and was thoroughly familiar with it.

After stripping him naked, his body was thoroughly examined. They then tossed a faded old blue uniform at him. Get dressed! It fit him badly. He wasn’t permitted to retain any of his personal belongings, not even his comb. After a medic checked his wound and rebandaged it, he was lead down corridors, through barred doors into his kingdom for the next few months. Back then, however, he wasn’t yet thinking how never-ending time would seem to him.

The cell was dark and narrow. A wooden plank similar to a mini stage straddled the width of the cell from wall to wall, taking up the entire space along the back wall of the cell. The remainder of the space