Sixty-five years after the Berlin Wall was constructed, approximately 37,000 individuals who suffered under the SED dictatorship continue to receive victim pensions, according to Evelyn Zupke, the Federal Parliament’s commissioner for SED victims.
Speaking to “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland,” she stated that the injustice represented by the Berlin Wall and the inner-German border clearly demonstrates that the GDR was a dictatorship. Zupke warned that anyone who glorifies the GDR today is not only “historically forgetful” but is also committing “an insult to thousands of victims of political violence in the GDR.”
Furthermore, Zupke emphasized that the Wall was built by an “inhuman dictatorship.” She underscored that it was the peaceful citizenry, through courageous protest, that managed to tear it down. She called for efforts to honor freedom fighters and their decades of resistance at a central location in the capital’s cityscape, similar to how the June 17th street is remembered in commemoration of the victims of the SED dictatorship.
According to Zupke’s data, there were around 250,000 political prisoners detained in institutions and youth correctional facilities between 1945 and 1989. This number also includes other groups of victims, such as those who were forcibly expellees and individuals who were systematically psychologically tormented by state institutions.
