A motivated forgetting of the past can be self-induced by victims such as Julia, although the audience is not made aware of her story until later in the book. Julia goes through a psychotherapy during which she reveals her past trauma of her rape at the scene of the descent of the wall. However, even during this therapy she purposefully withdrew information claiming, "there are things I don't remember", revealing a new dimension to Funders contemplation of forgetting and remembering while inducing a female sensibility. Those who choose to forget may likely do so on the perceived grounds that it is better to 'go into the future unburdened of everything. Overall, such attitudes tend to result in an unhealthy inability to move on, leaving those paralysed in the past. .
Like Julia, 'spic and span' Frau Paul, is damaged (even considerably more damaged) by the years of the Stasi. As she recounts her piteous story of the choice between her son and conforming to the enemy, Frau Paul wipes away tears with her "neatly pressed handkerchief". Yet, unlike Julia, Frau Paul accepts her past for what it is, openly retells it, but still, allows it to turn her to 'a lonely, teary, guilt wracked wreck". As her story is well known, she tells it as a sort of warning, but it seems that there was never any resolution to her troubles, not in the past or the present. Despite efforts, there are many, like Paul, who find they are unable to move on from their experiences in the GDR. This may be an due to inability to find the answers they still yearn for, so they hold on to their story, their past, in hope that one day they may find what they need. Many victims of the Stasi, such as Miriam Weber, are still in the dark, stuck in a cruel state of unknowing. Miriam's story inspired Stasiland, and is woven throughout the book. She is "brave and strong and broken all at once", through her interrogation and traumatic time in prison, but like many she yearns for answers.
