First modification:
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a team of archivists, mostly women, has been sorting and collecting documents destroyed by the Stasi, East Germany's secret police. Known as the “Puzzle Women,” the team attempts to reconstruct these archives, even though the paper fragments are tiny and the number of archivists is insufficient. Meanwhile, the Stasi victims grow older and time is running out.
In 1989, the communist regime in East Germany collapsed with the fall of the Berlin Wall. At the Berlin headquarters of the Stasi, the all-powerful secret police, orders were given to immediately destroy the millions of files documenting decades of police surveillance. When the crowd finally entered the Stasi headquarters, East German citizens saved 111 kilometers of files and 16,000 sacks full of strips of paper (the remains of millions of torn files).
On the eve of German reunification in 1990, a team of archivists was formed with the goal of making sense of this gigantic paper puzzle. The majority of the archivists were women and for 30 years they have been dedicated to this titanic task. With the will and sacrifice of the monks of the Middle Ages, they patiently put together the fragments of the archives, reconstructing the history of their fellow citizens. When they finally come to read the files, victims sometimes discover that it was a husband, relative or co-worker who betrayed them to the Stasi.
The work of the “puzzle makers” is fundamental to understanding the history of the German Democratic Republic, the former East Germany. But his task is colossal. In the last three decades, the contents of only 500 bags out of a total of 16,000 have been reassembled. It is estimated that it would take several hundred years to manually reconstruct the content of the 55 million pages still waiting to be assembled. That is unless new technology and political will combine to unravel this puzzle as quickly as possible, revealing the legacy of a police state that some would like to know about, and others to forget.
#Reporters #Reconstructing #archives #destroyed #East #Germany39s #secret #police
