The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1
Page 33
It is about 3 to 5 minutes before the pipe is taken back out, all depending. (With extreme resistance, I can make it last as long as 20 to 30 minutes, but I am not strong enough to prevent the force-feeding altogether.)
Afterwards, I remain strapped in with my head pressed down for at least 10 minutes (sometimes it is longer), “to calm me down.”
The doctor has up to this point refused to give his name (his name is Freitag). A green (he’s named Vollmann) generally holds my head and presses it with all his strength against the leather headrest (until his hands start to tremble from the effort)—yeah, a real sadist— this takes place inside a 190 cm cubicle. Another one—he’s named Gomes or Komes—tightens the straps so much that they cut into my ankles and leave marks on my wrists that are still visible over an hour later. As I have, from the first day, offered occasional and partial resistance, I have a few bruises on my legs, arms, etc. The whole thing is always conducted rigorously so as to be over in 10 minutes.
As of this week (since Tuesday, October 8) I have offered almost no further active resistance, only passive resistance—no voluntary movement.
In this way it is more bearable. I can control myself so there is no gagging, etc., like today, for example, but that depends on me, not on the style of force-feeding. The pipe is, REGARDLES OF CIRCUMSTANCES, TORTURE.
As they are now generally conducting force-feeding with a tube through the nose, I favor a public statement against the doctor (P. should do this, as he has already prepared a motion for a ban on the pipe, which can serve as an ultimatum: “If you don’t … by … then …” It should also definitely be raised at the press conference, but only briefly, and only against the doctor, nothing against the greens.)
Shit: Today, after the force-feeding I had a brief short circuit, nothing extreme, only 5 minutes, total flickering, but fully conscious, only the eyes and ears.
Holger Meins
October 11, 1974
Holger Meins’ Last Letter
In a July 2008 interview with the Berlin left-wing daily, taz, Manfred Grashof acknowledged that he was the RAF prisoner referred to in this letter. In the interview, he explained that he had decided to break off the hunger strike because he felt that it was the result of a decision taken by a small number of prisoners who had not adequately discussed it with the others. (M. & S.)
You stupid idiot.
Start again immediately and carry on—if you haven’t already done so. That and nothing else. Today is the day for it.
It must be clear what it means for the pigs and against us—in the fray. If you were fully conscious when you gobbled that up—as a step away from this—then bon appetit. Then this is the end.
If it was a flip-out, a breakdown, disorientation—enough said.
Did you make a mistake—correct it.
Have you spun out—come back.
Although. That is naturally of a somewhat different order—because it’s honest. That must be clear to you—by now. If so, you must clearly say so, and immediately. “Simply couldn’t think,” etc. says nothing about you.
There is no guilt in the guerilla and no punishment in the collective. Only decisions and consequences, and I say it yet again.
The only thing that matters is the struggle— now, today, tomorrow; whether you eat or not, what matters is that you make a leap forward. Do better. Learn from your experience. That is what must be done. All the rest is shit. THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES. Each new fight, each action, each battle brings new and unprecedented experiences, and that is how the struggle develops. That is the only way it develops. The subjective side of the dialectic of revolution and counterrevolution: what makes the difference is knowing how to learn.
Through the struggle, for the struggle. As a result of the victories, but even more as a result of the errors, the reversals, the defeats.
That is one of the laws of Marxism.
Struggle, defeat, struggle anew, again defeat, again take up the struggle, and so on until the final victory. That is the logic of the people. So said the Old One.1
In any event, matter. The human being is nothing but matter, like everything else. The human being in his totality. The body and consciousness are “material,” and that which makes the human what he is, his freedom—is consciousness dominating matter—THE SELF and external nature, and, above all: being oneself. One of the pages of Engels: completely clear. The guerilla materializes in struggle—in revolutionary action, that is to say: without end—precisely: the struggle until death, and, of course: the collective.
It isn’t a question of matter, but of politics. Of PRAXIS. As you said: before as after, it’s all the same. Today, tomorrow, and so forth. Yesterday is past. A criterion doubtless, but above all a FACT. What is—now—depends primarily on you. The hunger strike is far from over.
And the struggle never ends.
But
There is obviously only one point: if you know that with each of the PIG’S VICTORIES the concrete objective of killing gets more concrete—and that you no longer want to take part, thereby protecting yourself—then that is a victory for the PIGS, meaning you hand us over to them, and it is you who is the pig that divides and encircles us for your personal survival, so shut your mouth, “As has been said: praxis. Long live the RAF. Death to the pig system.”
Because—if you don’t want to continue the hunger strike with us—it would be better to be more honorable (if indeed you still know what that means: honor): “In short, I am alive. Down with the RAF. Victory to the pig system.”
Either a human or pig
Either to survive at any price or
to struggle until death
Either part of the problem or part of the solution
Between the two there is nothing
Victory or death—the people everywhere say that and that is the language of the guerilla—even given our tiny size here. Live or die, it is all the same:
“The people (meaning: us), who refuse to stop struggling—either they win or they die, instead of losing and dying.”
It’s very sad to have to write you again about this sort of thing. Of course, I don’t know either what it is like when a person dies or when they kill you. How would I know? In a moment of truth, the other morning, for the first time it crossed my mind: this is it (obviously I still don’t know)—and afterwards (facing the gun aimed between the eyes), it’s all the same, that’s it. In any case, on the right side.
You too must also know something about this. Whatever. No matter what, we all die. It’s only a question of how, and of how you lived, and one thing is completely clear: STRUGGLING AGAINST THE PIGS AS A PERSON STRUGGLING FOR THE LIBERATION OF THE PEOPLE. As a revolutionary in struggle—with an absolute love for life: with contempt for death. That means for me: serve the people—RAF.
(October 31, 1974)
It’s obviously bullshit, just like Berlin (previously, it sounded a lot better—a leap forward)—because I believed it to be her strategy as well: let her do it, it will soon come to a crisis, a few notable acts of swinishness in that regard: Stuttgart, Berlin starved out, Hamburg fattened up, testing and timely attack, otherwise the calculated fostering of contradictions—“to crack them.”
So far.
Uh huh, it’s up to us. Anyway it is also OUR STRUGGLE. The key is the unwavering struggle of each guerilla individually and within the ranks of the collective. Victory or death—really.
Then
Everything is very easy—to say. Because it’s the TRUTH: whatever one has not experienced/endured/overcome—one cannot know—if it has not been EXPERIENCED/ENDURED/OVERCOME—only thought, said, known. Simply the difference between consciousness and being. That is a FACT. One should not forget it.
First and foremost, we are victorious when we win.
To make it crystal clear: I did not give a report about force-feeding to Informationsdienst. Not a word from me in that direction. For the ad. SO WHO? I want to know now.
Regarding the claim about the
ban on the tube and this appointment of a certified doctor for force-feeding that I’ve heard about in the same way as you in Hamburg: previously, I had no idea. It suddenly cropped up.
That is exactly the problem with the lawyers: that they have no idea what we want or how to get it, WE and the STRUGGLE, for example, they ABOVE ALL don’t understand the hunger strike, their advocacy has a limited horizon: office/court, etc.
And on the other hand, I mainly think that they block it out. So I really don’t see the point, and that is the problem if one doesn’t really pay attention.
The tube issue is, of course, complete bullshit. It is really unnecessary. So it changes nothing.
Beyond that, the hunger strike: here things are really moving quickly—faster than I can write. Now I’m 46.8. 140-150 g daily (I’ve been weighing myself since the 28th—naturally, only when only I will know the outcome). I ingest 400 calories daily. The doctor-pig claims 1200: three tablespoons per 400—that is the case: three tablespoons = 400 (I have seen a copy of the original with my own eyes).
But otherwise: he feels certain—one must distinguish—SW—will be relocated, he knows he’s not part of it.
Holger Meins
November 1, 1974
Interview with Spiegel Magazine
This interview with Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof, and Raspe was published in the January 20, 1975, edition of the liberal news magazine Spiegel, under the title “Wir waren in den Durststreik treten” (We are escalating to a thirst strike). The fact that attorney Klaus Croissant worked as an intermediary between Spiegel and the prisoners to facilitate this interview would be cited as a reason to bar him from representing Andreas Baader at the Stammheim trial later that year—see page 346. (M. & S.)
Spiegel: Has the RAF adopted a new tactic? Have the campaigns that you prepared and led from within the prisons attracted the same interest amongst the people as the bombs and grenades you used in 1972?
RAF: It is not a matter of empty talk about tactics. We are prisoners, and we are currently struggling with the only weapon we have left in prison and in isolation: the collective hunger strike. We are doing this in order to break through the process of extermination in which we find ourselves—long years of social isolation. It is a life and death struggle: if we don’t succeed with this hunger strike we will either die or be psychologically and physically destroyed by brainwashing, isolation, and special treatment.
Spiegel: Is it really a matter of ”isolation torture” or even “extermination through prison conditions”? You read a lot of newspapers; if you like you can listen to the radio or watch television. For example, at one point Herr Baader had a library of 400 books. You are in contact with other members of the RAF. You exchange secret messages between yourselves. You receive visits and your lawyers come and go.
RAF: One might wonder about these things if all they had to go by was Spiegel and the information put out by the state security services.
If one only has access to Spiegel or state security information, one might ask that. Two, three, four years of social isolation—certainly no more than that—is enough for you to realize that you are in a process of extermination. You can deal with it for months, but not years. Breaking through the institutional brainwashing-by-isolation is a question of survival for us; this is the reason why the trials will go on without us.1 To claim that we are using the hunger strikes to make ourselves unfit for prison or unfit to appear in court—when everyone knows that the only political prisoners who are considered unfit for prison are those who are dead—is a countertactic, it is counterpropaganda. The BAW has already postponed these trials for three and a half years, so that the prisoners could be broken by isolation, by the dead wings, by brainwashing, and psychiatric reconstruction. The BAW is no longer interested in these trials taking place. Or, if they are to take place, it should only be without the accused and without their defense attorneys, because these are meant to be show trials to discredit revolutionary politics—imperialist state power is to be put on display, and Buback can only achieve this if we are not there.
Spiegel: Such lies don’t become more convincing, no matter how many times you repeat them; and the public understood long ago that these lies are put out in bad faith in order to sow doubts about the justice system, a goal in which you have achieved some success.
RAF: Because these are facts, you can’t eliminate their political importance simply by denying them.
Spiegel: You are being held in remand, having been charged with serious crimes such as murder and attempted murder. Aren’t you being held in the same conditions as other prisoners in remand?
RAF: We are demanding an end to special treatment, and not only for those in remand, but for all political prisoners—and by this we mean all proletarian prisoners who understand their situation politically, and who organize in solidarity with the prisoners’ struggle, regardless of why they are in prison.
The justice system also keeps prisoners who have already been sentenced in isolation, some for as many as four years, for example: Werner Hoppe, Helmut Pohl, Rolf Heissler, Ulrich Luther, and Siegfried Knutz. There are thousands of people here who are abused by the prison system, and the moment they begin to resist they are broken by isolation. This is what we are fighting against with this strike; it is a collective action against institutionalization and isolation. In the older prisons, where previously there were no “isolation facilities”—separate wings for “troublemakers”—meaning for those who disrupt the inhumanity which victimizes them—they will be built; for instance in Tegel, Bruchsal, Straubing, Hannover, Zweibrücken, etc.
In their architectural design, the new prisons incorporate isolation as a form of incarceration. In the FRG, these design principles are not in line with the Swedish model, but rather with the American methods and experiments with fascist rehabilitation programs.
Spiegel: In concrete terms, tell us what you mean by special treatment. We have looked into the actual prison conditions of the RAF collective. We found no evidence of “special treatment,” other than a series of privileges.
RAF: You have not looked into anything. You got your information from the state security services and the BAW.
When we say special treatment, we are referring to:1
• Eight months in the dead wing for Ulrike and Astrid;
• Years of isolation for all the RAF prisoners;
• Forced drugging ordered by the court “as an investigation technique”;
• Years of being chained during yard time;
• Ongoing court-ordered “immediate use of force,” which means cruel treatment in pacification cells, during transportation, during interrogation, as a result of confrontations, and during visits;
• Newspaper censorship;
• Special legislation;
• Special buildings for the trials of RAF prisoners in Kaiserslautern and in Stammheim—the 150 million DM,2 bloated state security budget for the Stammheim trial to take place in a concrete fortress, which will require the relocation of police units from three Länder, even though it looks like neither the accused nor their lawyers will even be allowed to be present— assuming, that is, that the justice system will let the accused live that long;
• Interfering with the defense, publishing defense materials, sections of files and state security documents and using them in government campaigns to determine the verdicts and have the defense barred.
The Springer Press has access to defense files and to files that the BAW has withheld from the defense. The defense attorneys are watched day and night. Their mail is opened, their telephones are bugged, and their offices are searched. They receive disciplinary sanctions from the bar for their public work. Relatives and visitors are harassed by the state security services, even at their jobs. They have been terrorized with open surveillance. Anyone who wants to write to us or visit us is spied on and ends up in the state security services’ files.
Because of the pressure from the hunger strike, they have made
cosmetic changes, small things, details, which the Ministry presents to film crews. In reality, nothing has changed.
The reality right now is that isolation is organized within the prisons with deadly technical precision—now with prisoners allowed to be together in groups of two for a few hours at a time. This doesn’t interfere with the destructive process; it remains a closed system. This means that the brainwashing is to continue and any social interaction will remain impossible. In regards to the outside, isolation is perfected by excluding the lawyers, or else by limiting their number to three at a time.
Given Posser’s3 conditions—for example our six years of remand—and the role of the BAW in postponing the trial, it’s clear what we mean by “extermination through prison conditions.” Disprove even one of these “privileges”!