Dorit Schmiel
Dorit Schmiel (born April 25, 1941 in Berlin , † February 19, 1962 there ) was a victim of the Berlin Wall . When trying to escape from the GDR with four acquaintances, members of the GDR border troops shot the then 20-year-old.
Life
Dorit Schmiel was born in Berlin during the Second World War , in which her father died. Together with her brother, she grew up with her mother and her second husband in East Berlin. There she learned the trade of seamstress in a state-owned company . Together with four friends, she decided at the beginning of 1962 to try to escape because of dissatisfaction with the political conditions in the GDR and the permanent division of Berlin . They decided on a spot in the north of the city where a cousin of Dorit Schmiel had managed to escape. The border at this point was mainly secured with barbed wire.
Around midnight on February 19, 1962, the quintet went to Berlin-Rosenthal on the border with the West Berlin district of Reinickendorf in bad winter weather . After watching the border guards, they crept past a cemetery to the rear fence of the border. They cut the fence with wire cutters and entered the death strip . In the snow they crawled towards the outer border fence. When they got there, the border guards spotted the group and opened fire. A bullet hit Schmiel in the abdomen. Another refugee was hit in the shoulder. The fugitives followed the border guards' request to surrender. Border guards took the two injured people to the next street, where they were picked up by an ambulance 30 minutes later and taken to the hospital of the People's Police in Berlin-Mitte. Dorit Schmiel died there.
The surviving refugees were arrested, interrogated and later sentenced to between 10 and 24 months in prison by the Pankow District Court. After German reunification, the Berlin public prosecutor brought charges against the three border guards at the Berlin Regional Court . In 1994, the court sentenced her to 18 months probation for collective manslaughter, a common sentence in wall rifle trials .
literature
- Christine Brecht : Dorit Schmiel , in: The victims of the Berlin Wall 1961–1989 , Links, Berlin 2009, pp. 70–72.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Schmiel, Dorit |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German casualty from the Berlin Wall |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 25, 1941 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | 19th February 1962 |
| Place of death | Berlin |