How to covertly toss an apartment, Stasi style

boing
41

Thanks for the tip, that one slipped by me so far!

42

Because it hasn’t been a copier in the sense you are likely thinking about - aka what we call today “xerox”.

It was simply a portable camera mounted on a boom with a light (or a built-in flash), used to photograph documents - either on a regular film or microfiche/microfilm. USSR made quite a few small cameras like that. They were commonly used for archiving official documents.

Likely a variant of this:
http://ussrphoto.com/wiki/default.asp?WikiCatID=17&ParentID=1&ContentID=1209

or this one which looks very similar to what is in the film:
http://ussrphoto.com/wiki/default.asp?WikiCatID=17&ParentID=1&ContentID=51&Item=Yolochka

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43

“Klaus! We’ve been found out!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, the Stasi have been here… They made the bed!”
“Those bastards!”

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44

Thanks so much for this reply!

45

A messy apartment makes it harder for the searchers to know which specific thing I’ve placed specifically as a tipoff…

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46

January 7, 1984? That was the day of my bar mitzvah!

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47

Minox camera + “copy stand”

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48

plausible story. … where were you really?

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49

Here’s how Orson Welles does it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFT083GhycM

50

Yes, and it was only the Stasi’s prolific use of Polaroid cameras that barely kept Polaroid film production going; notice that the Polaroid Corp. ended such production less than 20 years after the dissolution of the Stasi.

File that one under ‘How to start a ridiculous, unsubstantiated rumor without it first appearing on You Tube’

:yum:

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51

I found this interesting story, written a couple months after the 1991 coup:

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/24/business/polaroid-s-russian-success-story.html?pagewanted=all

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52

This will only provide additional fuel to my absolutely retarded, bone-headed conjecture and drive the conspiracy/kook fringe into a lather.

Thanks for nothing!!!

:blush:

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53

The Stasi passed on these because they didn’t like the case: cheap vinyl

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54

There’s nothing quite the same as Soviet leather.

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55

Yes, yes… horse leather. The suppleness comes from beating the crap out of the poor beasts before killing them. Damn Soviets.

:no_mouth:

56
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57

I bet Stasi Sexual harassment videos are a hoot.

58

Maybe he found out who really was and went Clear… Oh, that’s an entirely different creepy, totalitarian organisation isn’t it.

59

So what would be a better translation of “unofficial evidence”? Is that more like unadmissible or circumstantial?

60

That’s essentially the plot of The Lives of Others.

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