To round out our perspective on Berlin's history, we paid a visit to the Berlin-Hohenschonhausen Memorial site. The memorial is on the grounds of a prison that was first used by the Soviets to persecute Nazis after WWII, before becoming a secret prison used by the Stasi, the State Security Service of East Germany. The Stasi were concerned with quashing all political dissent within the GDR, which manifested itself in a nightmarish surveillance state. The prison, which didn't appear on any maps of East Germany, was used by the Stasi to prosecute political opponents by means of interrogation, intimidation, and torture. The hardest part to digest was the fact that many former Stasi still live in the surrounding neighborhood, as the prison was fully functional until the wall came down in '89.