1956: Sylvester Murau, via filial impiety

ExecutedToday.com ^ | May 16, 2020 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

East Germany beheaded Sylvester Murau by fallbeil on this date in 1956.

A blue-collar laborer who served a jail sentence for poaching under the Third Reich, he’d joined GDR’s feared security service, the Stasi — until he was dismissed when some fascist dalliances during the war years came to light.

He then transitioned from Stasi agent Sylvester Murau to defector Sylvester Murau, fleeing to West Berlin and settled down in West Germany for life as a communist apostate.

That was in 1954. Later that same year, his daughter Brigitte “Gitta” Cullmann, popped in for a visit — transit between East and West Germany was not yet impeded by any wall back then — and fell to drinking with him in Heubach with some pals.

Well, it turns out that Brigitte was a Tier 1 Operative of a Stasi agent herself, albeit a real bum as a child: her presence induced dad to let his guard down with her acquaintances, and once ol’ Sly was sufficiently sauced, the visitors tossed him into a car and bundled him back over the border. It’s among hundreds of cases where Communist bloc defectors were forcibly repatriated eastward by Stasi kidnappers, there to meet all manner of mistreatment — but Murau’s situation was surely exceptional in depending on such obligingly disloyal kin for its very implementation.

Ruthless Gitta later married the Stasi colonel who planned the body-snatch.

[linMcHlp]

Stasi
Moscow

[HartleyMBaldwin]

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.

[Gay State Conservative]

I read a book about the Shtasi wich said,among many other things,that about one-in-eight East Germans were Stasi informants. It also said that spouses informed on spouses...children informed on parents...and parents informed on children!

There's an excellent film on the Stasi called "The Lives of Others". I'd encourage anyone with 2 hours to spare to see it.

[reg45]

Stasi: Coming to the USA if Biden is re-elected.

[Verginius Rufus]

I agree about the film “The Lives of Others.” I saw it on a trans-Atlantic flight which allowed me to watch it twice and pick up on details that I missed the first time.