Vanishing Point GDR

Overview

Their faces could be seen on countless wanted posters. The terrorists Susanne Albrecht, Silke Maier-Witt, Inge Viett and others were feverishly searched for, while only a few kilometers away they were leading a second life that could not have been more modest and inconspicuous. Eight former RAF terrorists had become well-behaved GDR citizens. The Stasi provided them with a new identity and thus protected them from the grasp of the FRG. "It was a culture shock," recalls Ralf Friedrich, for example, on his first day of work as a forklift driver at the Schwedt paper factory. The self-proclaimed guerrilla fighters found it difficult to transform themselves into inconspicuous comrades in the "workers' and farmers' state. In the early summer of 1990 - after the fall of the Wall - they were arrested.