For anyone who's interested in this bit of history, the Stasi museum in Berlin is well worth a visit. I recommend taking the tour, the guides do a great job in helping to make sense of all the artifacts on display. http://www.stasi-museum.de/en/enindex.htm
On the same topic, I would recommended visiting Terror Haza[0] (House of Terror) in Budapest, Hungary. As far as I remember, it was the old office of the Nazi local secret police and then the Communist local secret police. It is now a museum dedicated to what has been done by both regimes, and it has a really nice "visual" approach. Just as an example, the "role switch" of the secret police from Nazi to Communist (made most of the time by the same people), was well represented by a room full of lockers, with two dummies with the two corresponding different uniforms set on a rotating base and with memorabilia of the time including contract that was signed by Nazi secret police officer to vow that they have changed their mind and that now believed in the new regime.
