Before leaving for the Ministry for People’s Education I gave Martin another ring, but still no answer. I didn’t waste too much time on wondering where he might be—I had my own mission right now, and I was prepared: I had a plan and I had a pen.
I showed my RS pass at the main desk of the ministry, went down to the archive in the basement and asked for a Search Request Form. Feeling proud of myself for being so oblique I asked for staff lists for all the Special Homes, Durchgangsheime and Borstals in the districts of Berlin, Frankfurt and Potsdam. Under Reason For Search I put restitution claims. That sounded dry enough, I reckoned.
I had to wait for about ten minutes before the archivist creaked in, pushing a squealing trolley. She had about a thousand files, all boxed up in heavy, grey cartons. So much for being oblique, it was going to take me all day to find what I needed! I waited for the creaky lady to disappear again before getting a bottle of beer out of my rucksack. I hadn’t even got the top off when I heard a clucking from behind me.
“Just what do you think you are doing, young lady? This is an archive, not a bar. Either you put that away or you leave!” She carried on rattling away about what the world’s coming to and who’d have thought. I put the bloody bottle away, and opened the first box, and after a vicious stare the archivist crept away again. She’d probably gone to spy on me from her cubbyhole.
It took me a while to find the file for the Durchgangsheim here in Berlin, but the good news was that the archivist had been too lazy to sort out just the files I’d requested and had actually brought every single staff-related file, including the cadre files. So I found Becker and all his details in no time at all: Andreas Becker, deputy-director from October 1987 until the end of 1988, just over a year. On paper, he had impressive qualifications: study in Köthen, then awarded a doctorate by the College of Education in Potsdam. Later on he became a member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences and the Institution for Pedagogical Psychology.
A big fish, in other words.
I unclipped his photograph and slipped it into my pocket then made some notes about his qualifications and stuff. There was loads of boring stuff in there, like how he volunteered to help the police and the FDJ when he was a student, stuff like that, and I nearly didn’t bother copying that down. In the end I decided to. There was no up-to-date address or telephone number, but it was still a good start.
I flicked through the other files for a bit, but I had what I needed. I stacked the archive boxes back on the trolley and left.