Remembering when Germany was split in two

Probably the best known Cold War border crossing was located in the center of Berlin. In 1945 this was where the American and Russian sectors met. The crossing remained after the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, and then served for foreigners to cross between East and West Berlin. Today a private museum depicts the city's division and escape stories - those that succeeded and those that failed.

The repression of political opponents began in 1945 with the establishment of special camps, like the one in Buchenwald near Weimar. Here the Soviet secret police imprisoned nearly 30,000 people, often arbitrarily, in a former Nazi concentration camp. The remains of the camp today has exhibits documenting the conditions and stories of theses inmates as well as a memorial near the mass graves.

When East Germany was founded in 1949, the new government took charge of all prisoners. From 1950 the Ministry for State Security, known as the Stasi, was responsible for political prisoners. It had its headquarters in Berlin's Normannenstrasse until 1989. Today it is a museum that includes the preserved office of Erich Mielke, the last Minister of State Security.

On the June 17, 1953 there was a widespread uprising against the repressive East German government and the country's economic conditions. There was also strike action and protests in Dresden. This tank track on Postplatz square marks the brutal suppression of the uprising with Soviet tanks.

The suppression of the 1953 uprising was followed by a wave of arrests. The Stasi, who had not seen the protests coming, responded with force. For political prisoners, the central remand center in Berlin's Hohenschönhausen district was often the first stop. Since 1994, it has been home to the biggest research and memorial site in the former East Germany.

Bautzen II was the most feared of all Stasi secret police prisons in East Germany. Along with the remand center in Hohenschönhausen these "Stasi slammers" have become the embodiment for state repression. Visitors get an impression of prison conditions from inmate's biographies as well as sound and film recordings of the jail.

In 1964, the East German Ministry for Education under Margot Honecker created the juvenile detention center in Torgau. Behind five-meter walls, military style rule was imposed and offences severely punished. This memorial site today confronts what was the most brutal of all disciplinary institutions for juveniles in East Germany.

Beginning in 1952, parts of the former Stalag prisoner of war camp near Bremen were used as an emergency reception center for refugees from communist East Germany. Sandbostel became a camp for male East Germans under the age of 24 who had succeeded in escaping to the West. As many as 800 refugees were housed here at any given time.

The Berlin Wall became an international symbol of separation and servitude. After its fall in 1989 the original wall all but vanished from the city. The Berlin Wall Memorial, created to commemorate those killed trying to escape, contains one of the last pieces. This is where the official anniversary commemoration will take place on November 9.