Daughters of the KGB Read Online Free PDF

file dealing with Lubonja’s case that included reports of handwriting experts tying Lubonja to the diaries, statements by friends and family members produced at the trial, photocopies of pages from the diaries and transcripts of his interrogations – all this for keeping a diary! There was, however, no indication of who had betrayed him. After his release, Lubonja was constantly tormented by that question. He eventually managed to find the name of an ex-Sigurimi officer who had signed one paper in his file and traced that man’s telephone number in a local directory. The former secret policeman, named Lambi Kote, at first refused to meet him. By the time they finally met, Lubonja was in his early sixties and Kote was in his seventies – two old men whose battle was not yet over. Kote refused to answer any questions, except by posing his own, alleging that he had fallen out of favour and also been punished. After they parted, Lubonja said, ‘I was terrified that he [still] had power over me. He knew what had happened, and I didn’t.’ 3
    Knowledge is power. Will the remaining archives, kept in the Interior Ministry building in Tirana, ever be made public? It seems unlikely because both the ruling Democratic party and the opposition Socialists each accuse the other of blocking this, which smells of conspiracy. As BIRN comments, there are former Communists in the leadership of both parties who have personal reasons not to wish their past to be exposed.
    And so it is. In Albania, Bulgaria, Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Poland and Romania – different countries with very different people, languages and cultures – Stalin’s and Lenin’s lethal legacies linger on in the unmarked forest graves and the ruined lives of hundreds of thousands of people – and in the ballot boxes too, which is why so many surviving victims are denied the closure that might come from knowing why and by whom a relative was executed or they themselves imprisoned, tortured or deported.
    Notes
1 .    Ibid, pp. 196–7
2 .    More on www.balkaninsight.com
3 .    Ibid

A UTHOR N OTE
    All translations are by the author, unless otherwise attributed.
    All illustrations are from the author’s collection.
    Every effort has been made to trace copyright owners. In the event of any infringement, please communicate with the author, care of the publisher.

P LATES

    The streng geheim telex from Potsdam to Stasi Centre announcing the detention of the author.

The author in the exercise courtyard indicating the window of the solitary confinement cell he occupied.

Facade of the Lindenstrasse interrogation prison in Potsdam, now a memorial to all who suffered there. Only the bars on ground floor windows still hint at the suffering that went on there.

When the Red Army marched into Berlin in 1945, this is what it looked like after months of carpet bombing.

The Fuhrer of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler had committed suicide in the bunker, saying that the German people deserved to be wiped out because they had not been strong enough to beat the Allies in the war.

Sitting safely in the Kremlin was Josef Stalin who planned to use the survivors as pawns in his geopolitical chess game for world domination. During the war, several thousand German Communists had been trained in the USSR to turn the Soviet Zone of Occupation into a prison state.

It was a world of the very old, children and women, most of whom had been raped, like these refugees trudging across the Potsdammer Platz. All healthy men were in Allied POW camps, so there was no one to protect them.

At Yalta in February 1945 Stalin got everything his own way. US President Roosevelt was convinced Stalin was a gentleman who wanted nothing but victory. Prime Minister Winston Churchill knew Stalin’s game but Roosevelt would not listen to him.

At Potsdam in July-August 1945 (left), Roosevelt was dead, replaced by Harry Truman, unprepared to handle US–USSR relations. Churchill was in