Yesterday I wrote a diary (rescued) and for the sake of consistency, I will use the same title as part two.
The point of the diary was to point out how the "fuzzy" and "debatable" techniques the DoJ authorized, such as sleep deprivation. The techniques called "frat pranks", that people do not realize are torture. Things that do not seem as cut and dry as waterboarding. I gave a real life example of a 41 year old man and the long lasting psychological effects of his 3 month incarceration by the East German Stasi. But the story doesn't end there.
So a better title for this part would be:
Reconciliation and Healing? A Personal and National Issue
"When we stepped out of the van there were men in riding boots with riding breeches and rubber truncheons screaming at us to remove our belts and shoelaces. I thought I was in a Nazi movie"
A lot of questions in most of the diaries surround a common theme: how do we as a nation face the horrors committed in our name? How do we expose the truth and hold the perpetrators accountable? What does this do to our collective national soul?
These are issues we will have to face if we are to heal and be honest with ourselves. Let us look at a country that is currently going through the process: Germany.
Germany is an interesting example. Germans have admirably and painfully struggled with reconciliation with themselves and Jewish people world-wide for the atrocities of a twelve-year regime. The worst regime in human history has marred and tainted the entire national psyche. Holocaust denial and display of the symbols of that regime are outlawed. Germany goes through great pains to distance themselves from the regime and tell the world that they are not like their grandparents, yet they cannot shake the stigma no matter how hard they try and probably will not for many, many generations.
I suspect that this painful soul searching from the Holocaust may be an inhibiting factor to reconciling with the second horrible regime that was instituted in its place in the East.
2. What happens when a nation cannot confront its past?
Röllig can't work and has been in and out of psychiatric therapy and hospitals for the last decade. He had initially managed to suppress the trauma and was enjoying life in unified Germany until one day in 1999 when his world collapsed. A chance encounter with one of his interrogators in a Berlin department store brought all the memories flooding back and overwhelmed him. Röllig tried to commit suicide with sleeping pills that night.
That dovetails from the point of the diary yesterday from dismissing the OLC memos claiming that these techniques have no long term psychological effects to the point of this diary when a country does not reconcile its past and hold people accountable. The perpetrators go free, and in this case still torment the victims twenty years later. When Herr Röllig first encountered his perpetrator, he was a salesman in a Berlin department store in 1999. He was selling a man 750 euros worth of cigars when he looked up and recognized a face that he could never forget and undoubtedly haunts him in his dreams every night. This is how the traumatized man responded to his PTSD stressor encounter.
"I thought, what do I do now? Do I smash his face in? Then I thought, he's not that old, maybe we can talk about this, he'll apologize and we'll shake hands," said Röllig.
"I told him who I was and said let's shake hands and say you're sorry. He first looked baffled and then it dawned on him and he gave me this look of hatred. He said: 'What am I supposed to apologize for? You're a criminal!'"
"I wanted to hurl myself over the counter at him but colleagues held me back and I was just screaming. He just walked off. Anger, frustration, fear, sadness all the feelings I thought I'd come to terms with suddenly came up again. That night I tried to kill myself because I thought now they've found me, now it's all over." A friend found Röllig in time. He was referred to a psychiatric institution and lost his job.
And the perpetrator walks away free. Not only that, but now they are coming out of the woodwork to write books and make appearances:
In recent years Stasi members have been writing books about the good old days and taking legal action against newspapers or former prisoners who name them publicly. They have been emboldened by the passage of a statute of limitations deadline in 2000 since when Stasi officers can no longer be prosecuted for any crimes they committed apart from murder or manslaughter.
This is important. This is already happening in the US media and the media is complicit as apologists for those perpetrators in the Bush/Cheney administration. That statute of limitations is also fast approaching in the US too. If we are going to avoid years of torment in our national consciousness, we need investigations and prosecutions NOW! Not white washing or sweeping under the rug.
The other danger of "moving forward" without accountability is revisionist history. Here, it even has a name: "Ostalgia", a play on words Ost (East) and Nostalga.
"I really can't stand this sentence you often hear these days: 'Not everything was bad about the GDR.' I'm speechless when I hear people going on about the great child care and the great education system in East Germany. It's a lie. People were indoctrinated there like they were under the Nazis."
Lies in history lead to lies in textbooks, lead to more lies and this is how history can repeat itself. When the perpetrators remain free, as I said above, they can and will continue to torment their victims.
Recently, as Röllig was walking to the prison, one retired Stasi officer called out to him over his garden fence: "It'll be our turn again one day! You'll be among the first we lock up again!"
Here's a fun experiment for anyone with a sockpuppet at Red State. Go over to Red State on any diary that is demonizing liberals and post this: "It'll be our turn again one day! You'll be among the first we lock up again!" See what the responses are from such "Patriotic Americans". Then if you feel like losing your sockpuppet, post the comment in full context of the retired East German Communist Stasi Officer. They probably will not see the logic but I am sure that it would be educational to see how the right in this country is so close the the extreme totalitarian left of the DDR.
At least Herr Röllig has a cheeky sense of humor, his reply?
"Yes but by then you'll be long dead," said Röllig, whose quick wit and eloquence mask the turmoil inside.
But all is not lost but rather hopeful when the Head of State confronts her country's past, and therefore symbolically, forcing the country to do the same, however slow the progress is.
The prisoners' campaign got a symbolic boost this week from Chancellor Angela Merkel, who visited Hohenschönhausen on Tuesday. She said the prison "shows how brutally people's dignity was hurt...It's important that this chapter of the GDR dictatorship isn't hidden or forgotten," she told reporters.
The US Head of State may also want to consider this for a moment and the consequences of simply "moving forward".
3. A Torture Victim Copes
But it is not all despair for Herr Röllig. His story is also one of triumph and healing and purpose. I find him to be a great inspiration in confronting his demons head-on and doing as much as he can to educate his fellow countrymen on the hidden atrocicities and the consequences of a reunified Germany "moving forward"
But Röllig keeps on returning to Hohenschönhausen, every month to give tours of the drab, concrete complex of 103 cells and 230 interrogation rooms that now serves as a memorial to the victims of the Stasi.
Why does he come back? For one, it gives him a sense of triumph. "A lot of the old Stasi guys still live in this neighborhood and this place is like a thorn in their side. I like the thought of that."
In SERE, you learn to resist and you learn the small victories are the most important. Every small victory won against your perpetrators is an incedible personal triumph. This man has even greater triumphs and he is incedibly brave.
BTW, Herr Röllig was called a liar on his website from a former Stasi officer and won a libel suit, here is his poetic justice in his own words:
"He was ordered to pay me €2,785. I'm going to use that money to help fulfil a dream -- a cruise to New York on Queen Mary II," said Röllig with a smile. "And I'll definitely be sending him a postcard."
4. All Politics are local, the political is the personal
I live in Jena in the eastern state of Thuringia. I am a member of The Left Party. The Left was previously the Party of Democratic Socialists (PDS) that grew out of the old communist totalitarian SED. Nevertheless, the PDS when it formed denounced the SED and totalitarian atrocities. The Left's platform (here in English PDF) clearly shows an anti-war, social justice and labor platform. Reforms of the social safety net for the poor, pensioners, students, disabled are our mantra: all good progressive stances. A very good amount of young people who weren't even born when the Wall fell.
Nevertheless, there are still the Stalinist dinosaurs who are still in the Party. I think they need to be run out, they certainly do not reflect my values or beliefs, particularly our regional Party leader:
Röllig said the Left Party, which emerged from the communist party that ruled East Germany to become a major electoral force in both eastern and western Germany, even sharing power in the city-state government of Berlin, has been propagating a warped view of the past. Left Party officials including Bodo Ramelow, the regional party leader in the eastern state of Thuringia, are on record denying that East Germany was an "unjust state."
There is no place for that in today's progressive and left movement. It is certainly a moral consideration of mine but I don't think I will leave the party anymore than I would leave the Democrats for having torture complicit enablers in Congress because we have our Senator Whitehouses too.
But, there is a function coming up on June 12th to discuss opposition for public school tuition and Herr Ramelow will be there, perhaps I shall give him a piece of my mind.
The final word from Herr Röllig
The law banning people from denying the Holocaust should be broadened to include denial of the crimes of East Germany's communist dictatorship
http://www.spiegel.de/...