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Franziska Giffey (SPD,r-l), Governing Mayor of Berlin, Axel Klausmeier, Director of the Berlin Wall Foundation, and Dennis Buchner (SPD), President of the Berlin House of Representatives, stand in front of the memorial wreaths in front of the memorial during the commemoration ceremony for the victims of the Wall and division.
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Franziska Giffey (SPD), Governing Mayor of Berlin, lays a memorial wreath in front of the memorial during the commemoration ceremony for the victims of the Wall and division.
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Franziska Giffey (SPD), Governing Mayor of Berlin, addresses Karin Gueffroy, mother of the last person to die at the Wall, Chris Gueffroy, at the memorial service for the victims of the Wall and division.
The construction of the Wall 61 years ago and the victims of the GDR border regime were commemorated in Berlin.
Berlin's Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) laid a wreath at the Bernauer Strasse memorial on Saturday. "The Berlin Wall was a structure of unfreedom, injustice and dictatorship," Giffey had said in advance.
The GDR began building the Wall around the western part of Berlin on 13 August 1961. The bulwark separated the city into two halves for more than 28 years. The division of Berlin only ended with the fall of the Wall on 9 November 1989. Giffey recalled the people who had lost their lives trying to overcome the Wall and escape to freedom. Among them, she said, was Peter Fechter, who was just 18 years old. "His death in August 1962 reflects the brutality and cruelty of the Wall in a special way".
According to researchers, at least 140 people died at the hands of GDR border guards in Berlin alone after the Wall was built. According to the Federal Government, at least 260 people died at the inner-German border. There is a historical responsibility to keep alive what happened and to remember the suffering, Giffey stressed.