Germans Surprised 17,000 Former Stasi Goons Now Civil Servants

Hell, I guess even rats have to eat:

Berliners and the citizens of eastern Germany are struggling to digest the news that thousands of former members of the dreaded Stasi secret police were working as their local civil servants, police officers and teachers, almost 20 years after the Iron Curtain collapsed.

More than 17,000 staff currently employed by Berlin and eastern Germany's five federal states were estimated to have worked for the all-pervasive communist police organisation, according to evidence compiled by historians at Berlin's Free University.

Shocking cases came to light after the fall of the Berlin Wall, including a husband who spied on his dissident wife for years and a mother who informed the Stasi about her son after he reached puberty because she considered him a threat to the state.

You can read the entire IndependentUK story here.

Interesting stuff.

(h/t: HotAir Headlines)