Anniversary of the wall building
Sacrificial representative: “Democracy is not a matter of course”
On August 13, 1961, the GDR began building the Berlin Wall. After that, dozens of people died when attempting to escape. The SED victim officer believes that remembering should not fade.
On the anniversary of the 1961 wall building, SED victim representative Evelyn Zupke asked people not to forget the horrors of the dictatorship. “The Berlin Wall, it warns us that freedom and democracy are not a matter of course,” said Zupke at a celebration in the memorial on Bernauer Strasse. “It is a message that seems as urgent today as rarely before.”
The GDR started on August 13, 1961 to attach its border to West Berlin with a wall over 150 kilometers. Previously, hundreds of thousands from the GDR had left to the west since the end of World War II. After 1961, around 140 people died after attempts to escape.
“Immune system against totalitarian tendencies”
Zupke said to the memorial: “It is up to us to honor the victims of the SED dictatorship and at the same time convey the value of freedom into society.” The Berlin Wall and the inner German border were more than just a crack through the capital and the country. “She was the signal of a repressive state to its citizens to stone, concrete and barbed wire: ‘Your freedom is in our hands’,” said the Bundestag’s SED victim officer.
Minister of Culture Wolfram Weimer also warned that the memory of the injustice in the GDR. The memorials also promoted by his house are particularly important for this, said Weimer in Berlin. “They keep the memory of injustice and persecution alive and thus strengthen the immune system of the whole society against totalitarian tendencies.”
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More GDR history in school
The foundation for the processing of the SED dictatorship also calls for more reliable school lessons on the GDR history. Actually, the placement of the basic data and facts about the GDR in the historical lessons of the upper level, said the foundation director Anna Kaminsky of the German Press Agency. Often, however, the topic only comes at the end of the school year when time becomes scarce. “How intensively the topic is treated still depends on the commitment and training of teachers,” said Kaminsky.
Surveys show that many younger people cannot assign key data like August 13, 1961 straight away. Kaminsky said: “If the stories that are connected and told with such visual and brutal events such as the popular uprising from June 1953 or the Wall construction of August 1961, a piece of dictatorship is always lost.”
Furthermore, she said: “And today it is urgently necessary to identify the differences between dictatorship and democracy.”
dpa
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
