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August 17, 2007
The death of Peter Fechter
At midday on 17 August, 1962, Peter Fechter and Helmut Kulbeik, two teenage citizens of the GDR, jumped from a ground floor window on Zimmerstraße, Berlin, into 'the death strip' - an area of no-mans land leading up to the Berlin wall.
As they reached the wall, ignoring orders from the GDR guards to halt, they were fired upon, with a total of twenty one shots. Helmut made it over the wall to safety but Peter was hit a number of times in the back and abdomen.
Seriously wounded, he lay a few yards short of the wall shouting for help. Having seen what had happened, hundreds of citizens of West Berlin gathered, shouting demands at the GDR guards and American soldiers to help Peter, though they did nothing.
After fifty minutes of calling for help, his calls fell silent. More than an hour after the attempted escape, GDR guards finally removed his dead body from the death strip.
Out of an impulse I signed up to go see this event being re-enacted this Saturday at an undisclosed location. I'll have to show up at the ICA door in the morning and a pack of us will be taken there by bus - not blindfolded I hope. Now I'm dreading it. Considering I have gun phobia and always get out of movie theaters with clenched fists, sore jaws from all the tension and puffy, swollen eyes from all the crying after watching any war movie, what the hell was I thinking? I suppose that's the upside of being brought up in a catholic country no matter how much of an atheist you are: the idea that sacrifice will be rewarded gets imprinted indelibly on your soul.
Posted by claudia