Berlin Wall Museum Releases Latest Figures Of Those Killed

The Berlin Wall Museum has released its latest research figures, which for the first time include those of guards who committed suicide. The release coincides with the 48th year since the wall was built.

According to Hungarian-language Mult-Kor website, a total of 1,374 people died trying to leave the Soviet Occupation Zone — later the German Democratic Republic (GDR) — between 1945 and 1989. The latest research by the museum showed an additional 44 victims discovered in a recount of the dead. A suprisingly high number were border guards under orders to shoot to kill. Some chose to commit suicide rather than carry out such orders. Of the dead, about 140 were killed on the actual wall itself, the rest died in the borer zone from the Baltic Sea to the Czechoslovak border. Scholars continue to debate the exact number of those killed on the actual wall itself, but the German-language Chronicle of the Wall gives the number known to date as 136. The website says nine children and many aged people were among the dead.