Burglars have stolen communist-era medals and jewellery from the Stasi Museum in Berlin, housed in the former secret police headquarters.<\/p>\n
The break-in happened just six days after\u00a0diamonds worth millions of euros were stolen from the Green Vault<\/a>, part of a former royal palace in Dresden.<\/p>\n The items stolen in Berlin are worth “a few thousand euros”, museum director J\u00f6rg Drieselmann told the BBC.<\/p>\n The Stasi had a huge network of spies and informers in former East Germany.<\/p>\n “Eight or nine orders were stolen,” Mr Drieselmann said, but some of the medals were facsimiles, and “the physical damage done during the break-in costs more than what was stolen”.<\/p>\n Among the items stolen were an Order of Karl Marx and an Order of Lenin.<\/p>\n Mr Drieselmann said the jewellery taken was a pair of earrings, a ring with pearls and gems, a gold watch and a gold timepiece.<\/p>\n The burglars broke in through a ground-floor window on Saturday night, using a nearby roof, and are now on the run.<\/p>\n Part of the museum is the former office of Stasi chief Erich Mielke<\/a>, preserved as demonstrators found it when they stormed the Stasi building in January 1990.<\/p>\n When the communist East German state collapsed, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the Stasi was found to have many precious items confiscated from dissidents.<\/p>\n Mr Drieselmann said most of those valuables were later returned to the owners, but some items were not claimed, so they were put on display in the museum.<\/p>\n In some cases the Stasi sold confiscated jewellery in the West to earn much-needed hard currency.<\/p>\n Mr Drieselmann said the burglary lasted only about 15 minutes and guards were not keeping a permanent watch throughout the night.<\/p>\n Police investigating the much bigger Dresden burglary of 25 November have offered a \u20ac500,000 (\u00a3427,000; $551,000) reward for information leading to the suspects or the recovery of the stolen gems.<\/p>\n Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n