Victims: Avenging East Germans Killed In ... The Cold War's Forgotten

The Cold War's Forgotten Victims: Avenging East Germans Killed in ...
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About 2.6 million people left East Germany 1949 and the construction of the Berlin Wall on Aug. According to records of the GDR's former Ministry of State Security (MfS), more commonly known as the Stasi, 14,737 fugitives whose escape attempts had failed in other Soviet bloc countries were returned to East Germany between 1963 and 1988. According to the report filed by Bulgaria's notorious State Security Agency on July 14, 1989, both parents behaved "very reasonably." They gazed at their dead son. After that, most fugitives tried to escape through other socialist countries. At least 18 were shot by border guards, mowed down with as few scruples as those murdered along the death strip that was Germany's inner border. Between 1961 and 1988, an estimated 7,000-8,000 East Germans successfully fled through Bulgaria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Bonsheva informs Appelius that he'll need consent forms from the victims' relatives, signed, notarized, translated into Bulgarian and notarized again. BStUGunter Pschera was killed by a Bulgarian border guard in 1967. Do you think we can take a look at your files?"Appelius has documented 18 deaths so far, the deaths of Germans killed at the Bulgarian border. Finally, the next steel door reveals the source of the smell, the bodies of three men, shockingly naked, ready to be autopsied. He always tried to remove external influences from his work, says Dr. He died, and other than informing his parents, his death was to be kept a secret. He has already accumulated far more material on the cases than Bonsheva can offer. He is permitted to review one of her two boxes on the killings. He should not see the corpse as the human being he or she once was, otherwise it will be difficult for him to do his work as a medical examiner. His death remained unavenged.Like several thousand fellow East Germans, Weber had believed that it will be easier to get across the Bulgarian border than the border between East and West Germany. His parents came to Sofia to see their son one last time, before the body was incinerated and the remains flown back to Leipzig via Berlin. In other words, we don't have them here." Most of the records are still kept where they have always been: in the archives of the Defense Ministry, the intelligence service and the military.Bonsheva rolls her eyes and says: "You are looking for files? It consists of two-and-and-a-half walls stacked high with file boxes, and a reading room for six, but no more than eight people. It crashed through the left side of his face, his neck and his chest, before coming to rest in the back, just below the right armpit. It is a subject for which files, documents and records are required -- and people who are interested in these files."The law now states: Open the files. It shattered his cheekbone, upper jaw and two cervical vertebrae, crushed his spinal cord and ripped apart his chest aorta and his right lung. It starts with the smell, the cloying odor of decay, growing behind the brown steel doors, its dull impact becoming more penetrating in the semidarkness. It's the law, she says.The law she is referring to is relatively new. Kolev is a soft-spoken man, not very tall, hunched over and polite. Kolev says that he has performed autopsies on 10,000, perhaps even 12,000 corpses in his life. Kolev."I try to be objective," he says, smiling quietly.He does concede that several bodies of East German citizens were brought to the military forensic medicine division. Meeting the family of those whose autopsy he performs isn't such a good idea for a medical examiner. Michael Weber bled to death in the foothills of the Pirin Mountains in southern Bulgaria, 150 meters (492 feet) from the Greek border. Most of those who chose the Bulgarian route failed. Several bullets were found in most of the bodies. She says: "We have 20 kilometers (12 miles) of files. Slatko Nikolov Kolev, the head of the forensic medicine division of the Bulgarian People's Army. The attempted escape left perhaps two dozen of them dead.It is a forgotten, brutal chapter in German and European history, a chapter that now-unified Germany and especially post-Soviet Bulgaria is having trouble processing. The autopsy report states that he died quickly.FROM THE MAGAZINEFind out how you can reprint this DER SPIEGEL article in your publication.Weber died as one of the last fugitives from the communist German Democratic Republic. The East Germans who were killed attempting to flee through Bulgaria. The head of the military's forensic medicine division until a year ago and now an independent consultant, he gave up his military rank years ago. The room is still in use today.He was lying in this room, on one of these tables: 19-year-old Michael Weber, 1.70 meters (5' 6") tall, a muscular young man with a normal build and little body fat. The walls and floor of the basement room, the size of a large kitchen, are tiled. The Webers' son was killed by a bullet fired at close range, perhaps 1.5 to 2 meters (5 to 7 feet). There is nothing, for example, on Michael Weber, whose body was laid out on a metal table in front of Lieutenant Colonel Kolev in July 1989, in the autopsy room of the Military Medical Academy. They contain information about four cases, with which Appelius is already is familiar. They were shown the body from the side that had remained relatively recognizable.What they cann't see is detailed in the autopsy report, prepared by Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Things Have Not Changed' (06/26/2008)Ghosts of the Cold War: Berlin Resurrects Vanished Wall with GPS Guide (05/06/2008)Bonsheva, as dedicated as she is talkative, leads the way through the cramped space on Wrabcha Street. This is Sofia, and this is the old autopsy chamber at the city's Military Medical Academy. Weber's body was brought in discreetly through an access tunnel and removed just as inconspicuously. When he meets us in a caf� in downtown Sofia, he is cautious and hesitant at first, but after some reflection he agrees to talk about his memories.Yes, he says, the clinic did receive inquiries from Germany, and there were rumors that parents had traveled to Sofia.