Open house at East German secret police headquarters
March 17, 1996
Web posted at: 3:30 p.m. EST (2030 GMT)BERLIN, Germany (CNN) -- In a rare glimpse into the former East Germany's communist past, German citizens have been allowed inside the central archives of the former secret police known as the Stasi for the first time since hundreds of outraged people stormed the building six years ago.
More than 20,000 roamed through the former Berlin headquarters on the first weekend of the open house.
A catalog room holds index cards with which the Stasi documented the lives of 35 million East Germans.
Those monitored included people who applied to travel abroad to those who had routine contact with the secret police. Much of that information came from family and friends.
Saturday's visitors weren't allowed to view individual files. But they were able to see some of the 17,000 shredded documents destroyed by the Stasi after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Former Stasi workers have said that as many as 100 machines shredded documents at a time.
The Berlin headquarters contains only about half the documents collected by the secret police. The others are scattered in more than a dozen archives in other former Stasi buildings
Another exhibit displays various items that East German spies used during the Cold War, including cameras, microphones and forged West German postal stamps.
Just before its demise, the Stasi employed 90,000 full-time employees and some 175,000 unofficial informants.
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