Memorial to Heinz Sokolowski Heinz Sokolowski (17 December 1917 – 25 November 1965) was a German man who became the sixty-fourth known person to die at the

Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...

. Sokolowski, a former political prisoner, was shot and killed by

East German border troops The Border Troops of the German Democratic Republic (german: Grenztruppen der DDR) was the border guard of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1946 to 1990. The were the primary force guarding the Berlin Wall and the Inner German border, ...

while attempting to cross the Berlin Wall near to the

Brandenburg Gate The Brandenburg Gate (german: Brandenburger Tor ) is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin, built on the orders of Prussian king Frederick William II after restoring the Orangist power by suppressing the Dutch popular unrest. One ...

and the Reichstag building.Victims at the wall Heinz Sokolowski
Chronik der Mauer

Life

Heinz Sokolowski was born on 17 December 1917, in Frankfurt an der Oder, Imperial Germany, during the First World War. Following primary school, he apprenticed as a tailor before attending a trade school where he completed his education, eventually becoming a journalist with the Frankfurt Oder Zeitung. During World War II, Sokolowski was drafted into the Wehrmacht, fighting in various places and was also used as a war correspondent, before being captured by the Red Army in Russia during the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Sokolowski became a prisoner of war under custody of the Soviet Union, and supposedly became a

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

while participating in a working group. In 1946, shortly after the war ended, Sokolowski was released from Soviet captivity in 1946 and moved into the Soviet sector of Berlin, where he worked as a freelance journalist. The following year, he married and moved to Prenzlauer Berg with his wife and newborn daughter. The marriage lasted until 1951, and he worked for the Soviets until his arrest on 12 February 1953. A military tribunal found Sokolowski guilty on charges of espionage, and sentenced him at first to twenty years, then to ten years, imprisonment in a

labor camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...

in the Soviet Union. A few years later, the Soviets handed him over to the custody of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in 1956, during which he contracted tuberculosis. He was released from prison on 13 February 1963.

Death

Following his release, Sokolowski as an elevator operator in

East Berlin East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as ...

, while also having applied to leave East Germany, but was not approved for emigration. He made contacts in West Berlin in 1964, bringing him to the attention of the

Stasi The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the (),An abbreviation of . was the Intelligence agency, state security service of the East Germany from 1950 to 1990. The Stasi's function was similar to the KGB, serving as a means of maint ...

. After his dismissal as an elevator operator in May 1965, Sokolowski quickly began to plan his escape, which began at 5 AM on 25 November 1965. That morning, Sokolowski neared the border by Clara-Zetkin-Straße (now Dorotheenstraße) close to the

and the

Reichstag building The Reichstag (, ; officially: – ; en, Parliament) is a historic government building in Berlin which houses the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany's parliament. It was constructed to house the Imperial Diet (german: Reichstag) of the ...

when an East German border guard saw him and fired a warning shot, but he failed to respond. Other guards opened fire on Sokolowski, who had by this time reached the last wall topped with

barbed wire A close-up view of a barbed wire Roll of modern agricultural barbed wire Barbed wire, also known as barb wire, is a type of steel fencing wire constructed with sharp edges or points arranged at intervals along the strands. Its primary use is t ...

. Sokolowski was shot in the abdomen and died of his injuries on the way to the hospital.

Memorial

A three-meter-high cross was erected at the corner of Ebertstraße and Scheidemannstraße on 13 August 1966 in memory of Heinz Sokolowski. Inscribed upon this cross are his dates of birth and death and the legend ''"Nach 7 Jahren DDR-Haft erschossen auf der Flucht"''. Sokolowski is also remembered with a White Cross on the Reichstagufer.

Literature

* Hans-Hermann Hertle, Maria Nooke: ''Die Todesopfer an der Berliner Mauer 1961 - 1989 : ein biographisches Handbuch'' / hrsg. vom Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam und der Stiftung Berliner Mauer. Links, Berlin 2009, .

References

External links