"After World War II, 154,000 Germans were arrested by the Soviet secret police and held incommunicado in so-called special camps in the Soviet occupation zone. One third of the inmates did not survive captivity. Based on Russian and German sources, Suppressed Terror : History and Perception of Soviet Camps in Germany offers a multi-layered account of this chapter of Stalinist persecution and mass violence, which has largely been suppressed to this day. The reasons for this gap in German memory culture are also addressed"--Provided by publisher.

Preface to the English edition -- 1. Introduction -- The camp system -- Internees and SMT prisoners -- Explorations -- Detention measures -- Detention experiences -- Detention memories -- 2. Detention measures -- Internments -- "Mobilization" and "cleansing the rear area" between December 1944 and April 1945 -- The NKVD order no. 00315 or the end of "mobilization" -- The primacy of the pacification policy -- Isolation as "political prophylaxis" -- Soviet military tribunals (SMTs) -- The work of the SMTs -- Functional changes in the camp system -- The logic of judicial terror -- Judicial prosecution of "class enemies" -- "Political purges" and the struggle against "deviationists" -- Russian roulette -- 3. Detention experiences -- Arrest -- Dawn raids -- Denounced -- In shock -- In the "GPU cellars" -- Detention conditions -- Interrogations -- Traitors -- Verdicts -- In Special Camp No. 7/No. 1 Sachsenhausen -- Parallel worlds : "politicals" and "criminals" -- The divided camp community -- Daily life in the Sachsenhausen Special Camp -- Fragments -- 4. Detention memoirs -- Freedom -- The closure of the special camps, 1950 -- The combat group against inhumanity -- The price of recognition -- "Empty" memory sites -- "Second-class victims" or self-imposed isolation -- A last attempt : the Publication Offensive after 1989-1990 -- "Gray" literature -- The dependency trap -- "Documentarism" as narrative style -- "Alternate framings" and other "narrative templates" -- Self-devised traps : memoirs after 1989 -- 5. The special camps and their place in history -- Internment camps -- The POW camps of the GUPVI -- The Soviet gulag -- National socialist camps -- Index of names -- Subject index.