Fifty years ago, on August 17, 1962, perhaps the most famous death at the Berlin Wall occurred. From Wikipedia:
“About one year after the construction of the wall, [Peter] Fechter [, a construction worker from East Germany,] attempted to flee from East Germany together with his friend Helmut Kulbeik. The plan was to hide in a carpenter's workshop near the wall in Zimmerstrasse and, after observing the border guards from there, to jump out of a window into the so-called death-strip…, run across it, and climb over the two metre wall topped with barbed wire into the Kreuzberg district of West Berlin near Checkpoint Charlie.
When both reached the wall, guards fired at them. Although Kulbeik succeeded in crossing the wall, Fechter, still on the wall, was shot in the pelvis in plain view of hundreds of witnesses. He fell back into the death-strip on the Eastern side, where he remained in view of Western onlookers, including journalists. Despite his screams, he received no medical assistance from the East side, and could not be tended to by those on the West side. He bled to death after approximately one hour.”
According to an article published at Germany.info:
“The West German police had an order not to step on East German land. On the eastern side, too, everyone remained passive. Fechter’s dead body was finally taken away by the border guards when ‘a higher East German officer appeared and ordered them to move’, according to British historian Frederick Taylor’s research.
‘In Peter Fechter, the Berlin wall had found, not its first, but perhaps its greatest martyr’, writes the British historian.”
Here is a picture of the memorial to Peter Fechter. I took the picture in December 2010.
"Peter Fechter 1944 - 1962 ... he only wanted freedom."
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