Stasi headquarters
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Germany Will Pay ˆ6.3 Mill. to Reconstruct Stasi Docs
The German government has allotted ˆ6.3 million to reconstruct the archives of the East German secret service Stasi, The Times reported on Wednesday. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and it became clear that the German Democratic Republic would cease to exist as a separate state, the decision was made to destroy 45 million Stasi documents.
The operation was carried out hurriedly and there were not enough paper shredders to handle it, so many documents were torn into pieces by hand to be burned later. The never reached the fire, however. Now there are 16,250 sacks of torn documents. In 16 years, 25 members of a commission on archives has reassembled 350 sacks of documents without any technical support. At that rate, it would take several centuries to reassemble all the documents.
Now a computer program has been developed to scan the pieces of the documents and put them together automatically. With state financing, 400 sacks can be processed in two years, and the entire project can be completed in five or six years, if all goes as planned.
www.kommersant.com
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