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  The Cold War's Forgotten Victims: Avenging East Germans Killed in Bulgaria

The Cold War's Forgotten Victims Avenging East Germans Killed in Bulgaria

By Michael Sontheimer and Barbara Supp

Part 4: The Iron Curtain Begins to Tear

Eleven days later, a Stasi colonel received a telegram from Sofia. "Esteemed Comrade!" the message began. "On 8/23, at 22:30, 500 m south of the Kalotina check point, the border violators Rudolf Kühnle (or Künle), a resident of Nuremberg, and Wera Zauduer (or Sauduer), citizen of the GDR, were killed by a border patrol while attempting to illegally break through the Bulgarian-Yugoslavian border. Both bodies were taken to a hospital for autopsy. With socialist greetings."

A Westerner had been shot. How unpleasant. Unpleasant for East Germany that West Germany and the entire Western world would now become aware of the deaths in Bulgaria. Unpleasant for West Germany, that it would now have to acknowledge the deaths. The 1972 Kühnle/Sandner case came at a bad time for East and West. West Germany was in the process of normalizing relations with the GDR, and with Bulgaria. Until then, communication had taken place through trade delegations, but now a real embassy was about to be opened. But here was that old Cold War rearing its ugly head once again, and in a way that was uncomfortable for both sides.

The West German government publicly condemned the "actions taken by the Bulgarian border officials." But as the Nuremberg paper, the Nürnberger Nachrichten, later reported, when Rolf Kühnle was buried on Sep. 5, 1972, the federal government sent "no representative to attend the funeral service."

Sandner's parents hoped that German reunification would help their case. In 1990, they wrote to the "Alliance of Those Persecuted by Stalinist Regimes," stating that they wished to "take legal action against the murderers of our daughter." They demanded "the rehabilitation of our daughter and compensation for all the suffering of these 18 years that have passed since her death." But their efforts were in vain. They tried again in 1993, and received a response from the Office of Family and Social Affairs of the City of Chemnitz, which wrote: "There are no legal grounds whatsoever that provide for compensation or rehabilitation in your specific case."

The case was complicated enough from a legal standpoint. In Berlin, a special public prosecutor's office was created specifically to address the "East German government and reunification crimes." The Bulgaria cases were assigned to this new office.

Joachim Riedel, a public prosecutor charged with clarifying the legal situation, concluded that the East German government could not be held responsible for the deaths in Bulgaria, where the Bulgarians had installed their own deadly border control system. Did this mean that investigations of Bulgarian nationals would have to be conducted from Germany? According to the bizarre-sounding but legally correct opinion Riedel issued, the crimes were not committed against Germans because, under the legal situation in place at the time, a "German" was defined as someone who lived within the jurisdiction of the German Federal Criminal Code. This did not apply to citizens of the GDR.

The Berlin prosecutors considered cases against border guards in post-socialist countries to be a waste of time. According to former Chief Public Prosecutor Christoph Schaefgen, no one expected "Bulgaria to extradite such individuals." As a result, the dead remained buried in a legal no-man's land.

According to Riedel, there was and still is only one option for the families of East Germans killed in Bulgaria -- to place their hopes in the Bulgarian justice system. Only Bulgarian courts can impose sentences in these complex cases.

That was what Riedel wrote to the mother of Michael Weber, the 19-year-old who died in July 1989. She had turned to the Berlin public prosecutor's office for assistance in 1994. In his response to her petition, Riedel wrote that he regretted to inform her that she would have to continue pursuing her case directly against the applicable Bulgarian authorities.

That was exactly what she had tried to do for years, because she had been unable to purge an image from her mind, the image of two young men in Bulgaria's border zone, one of them 20, the other 19, one of them carrying a weapon, and the other one -- her son -- dying at the hands of the young Bulgarian soldier.

"Stop, or I'll shoot," he called out on that July 7, 1989, Georgi Vassilyev Tanev, a member of the Petrych 56440 military unit, told Bulgarian investigators. Then, he claimed, he fired two shots into the air before shooting at the escaping man -- shooting "at meat," as they say in the military.

Weber's mother hired an attorney in Germany and one in Bulgaria, where she filed a criminal complaint, for murder, under Section 115 of the Bulgarian Criminal Code. In the complaint, her lawyer pointed out that while the investigation report mentions a distance of more than 30 meters (98 feet), the medical examiner, Dr. Kolev, writes in his autopsy report that Weber was shot at a distance of 1.5 to 2 meters (5 to 7 feet). The complaint also noted that money Weber had been carrying, a large sum of Bulgarian lev banknotes, was missing, and that, according to Dr. Kolev's autopsy report, there were wounds on Weber's head and thigh that had nothing to do with the deadly gunshot. Did he fall? Was there a struggle?

Weber's mother traveled to Bulgaria twice to meet with the Bulgarian attorney. She told him that she wanted to know how Michael had in fact died, and that even the East German consul in Sofia had mentioned a "targeted and intentional deadly gunshot" in his report. She even managed to have the investigation against Tanev reopened, the same investigation that had already been closed once before, as was common with such investigations.

But it was a new era, and a small amount of investigating did in face take place -- but only a small amount. It was 1994, the investigation had ground to a halt, and Weber's mother eventually gave up hope of achieving anything. She was tired and fell ill, and has since died.

Did she have an idea of what Michael was planning to do? Fellow students from his school days say that he had spent years preparing for escape. He had tested himself to see how long he could survive without food, or how much cold he could bear at night by sleeping outside in the snow, without a sleeping bag. He wanted to get out. His parents were separated, which was hard on him. He wanted to escape to the West, perhaps to study law.

The Iron Curtain was beginning to tear in the summer Weber died. Hundreds of East German citizens sought asylum in West German embassies in Warsaw, Prague and Budapest, and were allowed to emigrate. Michael went to Bulgaria.

He obtained a compass and a map, and chose an escape route that would take him to Greece. He took along his life savings -- 790 West German marks, Bulgarian lev and a gold coin -- and spent his last night in Melnik, a tourist resort, where he slept in room 108 at the Balktantourist Hotel, 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the Greek border.

The restricted zone, or no-man's land, began after Melnik, or at least that was what he believed.

East German fugitives imagined the border as a no-man's land in the mountains. Anyone arriving in Novo Godshovo, a village near the spot where Weber died, could easily imagine that that was indeed the case.

Today it is a village of toothless old people sitting around gossiping, of old women carrying loaves of bread in bags, of sickly-looking goats and donkeys picking at dusty blades of grass in front of the village store. Down there by the river, the old people say, is the border. The mountains over there are Greek, they say. We have cousins living there.

And in the past? There was more going on here. There were 600 people in the village, a place of 60 souls today. The roads were better and electricity came to Novo Godshovo early on, because it was important that the border region not be some dead zone. Novo Godshovo's residents were part of the border, and it was all part of the grand plan.

When the soldiers from the nearby barracks came to the village store, the toothless old people say today, they would immediately tell them if strangers had been seen, if foreign sounds had been heard. A patrol would be sent out from the barracks -- four men in a jeep. If the soldiers caught anyone, they would sometimes give the villagers a reward, perhaps a piece of material for a new coat. What do you want from us?, the old villagers say, we were poor then, and we are poor today.

Michael Weber left Melnik at 2:30 p.m., most likely on foot, carrying a map, a compass and a pocketknife. Avoiding the talkative villagers, he hiked across the hills. It was warm outside. The figs were ripe and mulleins must have been in bloom.

He spent the night near Novo Godshovo, not far from the border. When he woke he wrapped a piece of green material around his head -- camouflage. Then, at 4:50 a.m., he cut a hole into a wire fence, stepped through and, in doing so, set off an alarm. He continued walking, perhaps even believing that he was already walking in a free country.

And then he died, down by the river.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan