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Not one of the torturers at Hohenschönhausen has been brought to justice.

Four times a year Frau Paul received permission to have a visitor (mostly her mother) but she’d be transported elsewhere for it so that neither she nor her visitor would know where in the GDR she was being kept. Mail was sent to another Stasi address, and brought to her opened. She had been taken out of time, and out of place.

Torsten remained over the years at the Westend Hospital. The nurses and doctors fed him through tubes and gave him medicine and changed his nappies. They sang him songs, they taught him to speak, and they tried to teach him to walk. The hospital was the only home and its staff the only people Torsten Rührdanz knew. This is one of the letters that got through to his parents. It was written in November 1963 when Torsten was nearly three years old:

Dear Mr and Mrs Rührdanz,

I learnt that you would like to be informed as to Torsten’s health, which I can very well understand. Generally he is cheerful, making progress with his walking, and happy. He has become the darling of the ward. Of course from time to time we still have difficulties to overcome, which means that, unfortunately, discharge from hospital is not possible in the foreseeable future. We cannot manage to feed him without a stomach tube, because as soon as he eats normally he is in pain. His weight is still unsatisfactory, at 7670 g. His height is also significantly less than the norm for his age. His diarrhoea has virtually ceased though. There is nothing left for us but to continue as we have been, and in the hope that his stomach will gradually widen and that the problems at the end of his diaphragm will mend.

You can be assured that everything possible will continue to be done for your child. I will write again before Christmas.

Yours sincerely,

Prof. Dr L.

Michael Hinze has always lived in the west. He was never kidnapped by the Stasi; he didn’t even know that they were after him. And, until recently, he had no idea that Frau Paul was in any way connected with his continuing freedom. ‘I found out about it a couple of years ago, after the Wall fell. For years I’d heard nothing from the Rührdanzes. Then they called me,’ he says. ‘All this story with the blackmailing and the plans to kidnap me—I knew nothing about that at all.’ He is slightly uncomfortable with the whole idea. ‘I mean I always saw myself as small fry. I just put people together, got passports. I knew it was illegal under GDR law, but…’ he trails off. He didn’t really think it through. Even if he had, how could he have imagined that someone else was being asked to pay a price for his liberty? ‘She’s a very courageous woman,’ Hinze continues, ‘I have a great deal of respect for her. I’m also grateful to her. But at the same time I don’t think I need to feel guilty—I don’t feel guilty, I mean, I was just lucky that I didn’t fall into the clutches of the Stasi. That way, or by other means.’ He thinks that if they had really wanted him they could have got him, and this is probably true.

‘She was very active in the whole thing,’ Hinze says admiringly. ‘The Rührdanzes used to marshal the people from Halle or Dresden or wherever who wanted to get out, and help them. They were very committed people.’

Frau Paul has told me none of this, although it might be something another person would be proud of. The picture we make of ourselves, with all its congruences and fantastical edges, sustains us. Frau Paul does not picture herself as a hero, or a dissident. She is a dental technician and a mother with a terrible family history. And she is a criminal. This seems to me the sorriest thing; that the picture she has of herself is one that the Stasi made for her.

‘I told her that her story moved me deeply,’ Hinze says. ‘And that I don’t know many people who would not have betrayed me. I said that there are not many people who have the courage she did. To behave with’—he’s looking for a way to describe