Читать книгу Where in the World is the Berlin Wall?. 170 Sites around the World онлайн

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At the start of the summer holidays in 1961, the amount of people fleeing the GDR soared. Many people disguised their escape as a holiday. This was a reaction to the foreign policy as well as the dramatic economic climate and the drastic supply problems that continually escalated.¹⁶

As part of a propaganda offensive, the GDR government depicted the refugee movement as a specific method of alienation from the West. In order to prevent further escapes, the GDR set up “human trafficking committees”. Alleged “human traffickers” were sentenced to harsh sentences in staged trials. By doing this, the government wanted to distract attention from the truth that people were leaving the GDR of their own free will. So-called border workers were also targeted. These were people who lived in East Berlin but worked in West Berlin.¹⁷ They were inspected more frequently at the border and some had their passports and ID taken from them so that they were no longer able to go to work in the West. Their number had risen to 56,000 due to the economic disparity between West and East Berlin before the Wall was built.¹⁸