In Berlin and Brandenburg, the construction of the Wall 61 years ago and the victims of the GDR border regime were remembered. Berlin’s Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) laid a wreath at the memorial on Bernauer Strasse on Saturday. “The Berlin Wall was a structure of bondage, injustice and dictatorship,” Giffey said in advance.
On August 13, 1961, the GDR began building the Wall around the western part of Berlin. The bulwark divided the city in two for more than 28 years. The division of Berlin only ended with the fall of the Wall on November 9, 1989.
Giffey remembered the people who lost their lives trying to climb the wall and escape to freedom. Among them is the just 18-year-old Peter Fechter. “His death in August 1962 reflects the brutality and cruelty of the Wall in a special way”.
According to researchers, at least 140 people died in Berlin alone after the Wall was built by East German border troops. According to the federal government, at least 260 people died at the inner-German border. Giffey emphasized that there is a historical responsibility to keep what happened alive and to remember the suffering.
In Brandenburg, too, politicians commemorated the victims of the inner-German division. Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke (SPD) and representatives of the state parliament visited the former GDR border tower in Hennigsdorf northwest of Berlin on Saturday. Today there is an exhibition on the history of the division of Berlin and its effects.
“Today we commemorate an event in the authentic place that meant a deep cut in the lives of many people,” said Woidke, according to the announcement. Places like the border tower told of this story and did not let the memories disappear for the following generations. “This is priceless.”
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Brandenburg’s state parliament vice-president Barbara Richstein (CDU) described the GDR border as “a monument of isolation and contempt for human beings”. Ultimately, however, the will to freedom was stronger than any barrier, “even if the wall cost the lives of many innocent people,” she said.
