The Stasi informant and me

By Matthew Engel

It was nearly 25 years ago, shortly after the Berlin Wall fell and just before the failed state of East Germany officially died of shame. A contact took me to visit a small flat on the far side of the fast-disappearing wall. Someone, I was told, wanted to meet me. It all sounded excitingly cold war-ish.

There I was introduced to a woman whom I considered elderly (ie, younger than I am now). Her name was Salomea Genin, and she had one hell of a history. Born Jewish in Berlin in 1932, she got out with her family to Australia in the nick of time. Far from revelling in her escape from the Nazis, she chafed against mindless Australian blandness and an unhappy family life. She became a communist and kept pleading to be allowed to live in East Germany. In 1963, two years after the wall was built and with her German contemporaries literally dying to get out, what must have been a bewildered bureaucrat accepted her request.