Let's see...there must be something around here we could sell to make a little money...

The Berlin Wall made for orderly markets...in Berliners (not jelly doughnuts);

People who tried to escape from East Germany during the Cold War could be shot, jailed and tortured.

....Meanwhile, East Germany's economy was in free fall. Many skilled workers and intellectuals had fled and the Soviet Union was stripping the country of its resources. By 1964 the fiscal situation had become so dire that the authorities developed a scheme to sell political prisoners to West Germany. They called it haeftlingsfreikauf.

Haeftlingsfreikauf translates to inmate free shopping.