The Banality of Allied Evil as 18-Year-Old Youth gunned down and left to die by cops

As a 100-year-old former German conscript and numerous other former conscripts are hounded and gaoled for life merely for being sentries at wartime holding facilities it is interesting to contrast the press denunciation with the media’s silence on a crime committed by Border Police a generation later ~ during peacetime.

Peter Fechter, an 18-year-old teenage German apprentice bricklayer became one of the hundreds who died, maimed for life or gaoled for their in their attempts to flee the Soviet Union. The USSR (1922-1990) was then ruled by the First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev who was celebrated and fawned upon by Western politicians and media journalists.

Peter Fechter was born on 14 January 1944, in Berlin, Germany, during the final years of World War II. Fechter was the third of four children and was raised in the Weißensee district of Berlin.

After the triumphant Allies ~ the united services of the Soviet, British and American empires had laid constitutional Germany to waste, Weißensee was located in the Soviet occupation zone of Berlin when the city was divided during the Allied Occupation. The Soviet zone later became East Berlin in East Germany.

On 13 August 1961, the East German authorities abruptly closed the border and began construction of the Berlin Wall, effectively separating Fechter and his family from his sister in West Berlin.

Fechter’s colleague, Helmut Kulbeik, later stated that he and Fechter had been contemplating fleeing to West Berlin for a while, and that they had also explored the border installations, but no actual planning was ever made at the time.

On 17 August 1962, Fechter and Helmut Kulbeik attempted to flee from Soviet-apportioned East Germany. The plan was to hide in a carpenter’s workshop near the wall on Zimmer Strasse and, after observing the border guards from there, to jump out of a window into the death-strip, a strip running between the main wall and a parallel fence which they had recently started to construct, run across it, and clamber over the two metre (6.5 ft) wall topped with barbed wire into the Kreuzberg district of West Berlin near Checkpoint Charlie.

Their plan was initially successful as both Fechter and Kulbeik did manage to reach the final wall. But as they began to climb the Soviet border guards fired at them. Although Kulbeik succeeded in crossing over the wall, Fechter was shot in the pelvis while still climbing, in plain view of hundreds of witnesses.

The terrified youth fell back into the death-strip on the East German side, where he remained in view of West German onlookers, including journalists. Despite his screams, Fechter received no medical assistance.

West Berlin police threw him bandages, which he could not reach. The teenager bled to death after approximately one hour. As a result of his murder, thousands in West Berlin formed a spontaneous demonstration, shouting ‘Murderers!’ at the border guards. 

The lack of medical assistance for Peter Fechter was wrongly and cowardly attributed to mutual fear: Western bystanders were prevented at gunpoint from assisting him, although according to a report in Time magazine, a second lieutenant of the US Army on the scene received specific orders from the US Commandant in West Berlin to stand firm and do nothing.

According to a report from forensic pathologist Otto Prokop, ‘Fechter had no chance of survival. The shot in the right hip had caused severe internal injuries. 

In March 1997, a full seven years after the reunification of Germany and 35 years after Fechter’s death, two former East German guards, Rolf Friedrich and Erich Schreiber, faced manslaughter charges for Fechter’s death. Both admitted to the shooting after an intense investigation. They were both convicted and sentenced to 20 and 21-months’ imprisonment on probation.

Due to a lack of conclusive evidence, the court was unable to determine which of three gunmen (one of whom had already died) had fired the fatal bullet. The three guards did not receive prison sentences as they mitigated their slaughter of the youth by claiming to be remorseful. Strange remorse when without any doubt the three comrades after many discussions already knew which of them had killed the fleeing teen. One doubts that God in his Judgement will accept their remorse.

The story of Peter Fechter was the headline of Western news media which today is strangely silent on the killing that bled the world’s heart.

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