‘Yes. Well, my father was a military journalist. He wrote about battles and new developments in weapons, the latest tanks and guns. He had access to military information, and one morning the Stasi arrived at our house and accused him of passing information to the armies on the other side of the Wall, in the West. My father said it wasn’t true, but one day he went out of the house and my mother saw some men bundle him into a delivery van. We did not hear from him for weeks until we were told he was in a Stasi prison camp in East Berlin. I was not allowed to visit him, but we heard from other people that the rooms had no windows but lights that were kept on all day and night to deprive the prisoners of sleep. Sometimes they would suddenly let my father out and he would come home. He never told us what happened in there, but he had sores on his head and his bones showed through his skin.’

‘That’s terrible, Granddad,’ I say.

‘Yes.’ Granddad stares at the picture. ‘And it was a cruel trick, because each time my father thought it was over, only for them to then arrest him again. He lost his job, and my mother too. She and I were placed under house arrest – never allowed to go out, never allowed anyone to visit. We lost contact with my aunties and uncles, all of our friends. I was forced to give up college. At night the soldiers would come and wake us. My father was not talking, so the Stasi came and interrogated us. They said they would torture my father if we did not tell them everything we knew, but we knew nothing. There was nothing.’

I try to think of something to say, but all I can think is how horrible it must have been.

Granddad reaches into the box.

‘These are our identity cards. We had to carry them all the time, and these . . .’ He reaches back into the box. ‘These are the security passes for me to go and see the head of the prison camp, Commander Steiner.’

‘You went to see him? . . . You went to see Commander Steiner.’

‘Yes.’

‘So you’re not—’

‘No.’ Granddad shakes his head slowly. ‘I am not Commander Steiner.’

I let out a big breath of relief. ‘But why did you have to go and see him?’ I ask. ‘You were only seventeen.’