The reconstructed contents of 500 trash bags offer new insights into the extent of spying activities by the East German secret police, or Stasi, in West Germany.
As the German regional public broadcaster RBB recently reported, the Stasi ran an extensive program of stealing identities of tens of thousands of West German citizens to enable their spies to operate freely in the West.
During the Cold War, West Berlin existed as an enclave in the middle of communist East Germany. If West Germans wanted to travel to and from Berlin by land, their largest city, they needed to pass through East Germany to get there. At these checkpoints, the East German border police routinely copied passports—a total of 60,000 by the time the Berlin Wall fell.
