A documentary revisits these 809 kilometers adjoining the German Federal Republic and Austria, where many Czech citizens and East Germans found death while trying to go to the west.
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Many documentaries dealt with how citizens of the late German Democratic Republic (GDR) have attempted, at the risk of their lives, to cross the Wall of Berlin (August 1961-November 1989) to leave the Socialist paradise for imperialist hell.
More rare are the documentaries who have looked at the particularly brutal, cruel and cynical methods used between 1948 and 1989 by the Czechoslovak communist power to prevent its own citizens, as well as many German Germans, to cross illegally the border. A real border of death extending over 809 kilometers and adjoining not only the German Federal Republic (FRG), but also Austria.
Hence the interest of this program, which cleverly mixes reconstituted escape scenes, testimonies of former border guards and citizens who have passed their escape. Lawyers also testify to the camera, and their words are important to explain the actions currently led by the German and Czech justice. The courts of Prague and Weiden (Germany) have recently been seized of these painful business thanks to the NGO Platform of European Memory and Consciousness , whose members have patiently formed citizens who have found death by trying to cross the border.
Memory and Justice
This is how 41 people are today the subject of an investigation. Of these, three former members of the Czechoslovak Politburo of the time. The Czech Republic therefore undertakes a long process of memory and justice, which should help families, but also allow the whole country to better understand the shadow areas of a past not so far.
Among the files of the victims are those of eleven citizens of the ex-GDR. Why did they try to reach the West via Czechoslovakia? Because at the time a rumor suggested that this border was less secure than that existing between the two Germans.
A totally unfounded rumor, both the detection systems have been performed. And both the young Czechoslovak border guards, closely monitored by the political commissioners disseminated in each company, had the easy trigger facing the “enemies of socialism” seeking to flee the country. Under very strong pressure, many of these young border guards (between 300 and 400) have been suicide.
Electrified barbed wire, closely monitored river paths, mines, dogs drawn up to kill, the systems set up by the Czechoslovak communist regime to avoid border leaks cold in the back. Testimonials confirm both the inexperience and cruel of local border guards, capable of shooting down in the backs of the fugitives on the very soil of the FRG.