Rick Oltman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors stricter limits on immigration, said a fence would do more to cut the death toll than establishing a guest-worker program would.
"The answer is deterrence," he said. "The most humane thing to do is to let people know they're not going to make it so they don't risk their lives."
--San Francisco Chronicle, April 14, 2006
In the 28 years of its existence, the wall claimed at least 86 victims. In reality the death toll was higher, much higher probably. However, this is hard to tell, even now, as such deaths were not recorded properly by the authorities of the Democratic Republic of Germany (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR)....The first victim of the wall was Günter Litfin. He was 24 years old. He was shot by transportation police, near the station of Berlin Friedrichstrasse. They tried to stop his attempt to get away. This was on 24th August, 1961, only 11 days after the inner-german border had been closed.
Peter Fechter bled to death in the death strip, on 17th August, 1962. This lead to a public outcry. American troops were watching him bleed, but could not do anything. East-German border police (who had wounded him), did not act....
In 1966, two children, aged 10 and 13 years, were killed by at least 40 gunshots in the border strip. This is unusual because the German border police had explicit orders not to shoot on pregnant women, children or mentally ill people.
The last deadly case took place on 6th February,1989. In the incident,Chris Gueffroy bled to death.
--Wikipedia entry, "Berlin Wall"
[That's all, folks]
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