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© Stéphane Compoint
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Peter Fechter memorial. On 17 August 1962, Peter Fechter, 18 years old, was shot by GDR border guards while trying to cross the wall to reach West Berlin. Seriously wounded, he remained on the ground, dying at the foot of the wall without assistance and became an early victim of the Wall. Police in West Berlin had no right to intervene and border guards at Checkpoint Charlie allies did not intervene either. This event provoked strong protests and had a considerable media attention in West Germany. Citizens of West Berlin, who had witnessed the tragedy, laid flowers and wreaths at the wall that day and created the memorial still exists today. At each anniversary of the Wall (13 August), citizens and politicians gather here for the victims of the Berlin Wall did not fall into oblivion. On 13 August 1999, the simple wooden cross was replaced by the bronze monument, the artist Karl Biedermann. Even today, an anonymous crowd comes bloom the stele erected to his memory at the location of his disappearance. Between 1961 and 1989, over 100,000 citizens of the GDR tried to flee their country. Several hundred of them were shot by border guards or died east German otherwise in their escape attempts. The exact number of victims who were killed in intra-German border or intra-Berlin is still not finalized. The statistics differ among sources of information.
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