Freedom of Religion and Conscience and Political Rights in North Korea
3. Historical development in the former state of injustice, GDR
Thesis: As in North Korea, freedom of conscience and religion, as well as the political rights of individuals or social groups were unfamiliar for the communists in the former GDR. These East German communists tried at times to cover up the reality, but they soon dropped their masks and their brutal faces became visible.
The Second World War ended in 1945. For more than 40 years, the world split into two blocks. The free western world confronted the communist bloc led by the Soviet Union. Similar to Korea, the division of those systems also separated Germany. The 1350 km long border separated East and West Germany and was represented by the Elbe River for 45 years.
Walter Ulbricht, the leader of the Communist Party of the GDR, defined the communist strategy to seize power in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany, or soon to be the GDR, as: "It has to look democratic, but we have to have everything under control."
(http://www.zeit.de/1965/19/es-muss-demokratisch-aussehen)
The seizure of power by the Communists was disguised as embracing the state, the property and the hearts of the people.
- Even in the last days of the war, the Russians established a Communist puppet government in their sphere of influence. The henchmen of the Russians were German communists next to the "Ulbricht Gruppe" (Ulbricht group). The Ulbricht group consisted of officials of the German Communist Party and ten so-called "anti-fascist prisoners of war", which returned to Germany at the April 30th, 1945 from their exile in the Soviet Union.
(Http://www.bundesarchiv.de/oeffentlichkeitsarbeit/bilder_dokumente/00767 /index.html.de)
- To affect a democratic veneer, Walter Ulbricht, the leader of the SED, and his comrades contacted respected former bourgeois politicians, intellectuals, scholars and Christian personalities. They were meant to camouflage the establishment of the communist dictatorship as a democratic fig leaf. The famous surgeon Professor Sauerbruch, the former SPD member of the Reichstag Grotewohl, Friedrich Ebert (jr.) or Jakob Kaiser and Ernst Lemmer of the Christian trade unions, played an important role in addition to others.
(Http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruppe_Ulbricht)
- In June 1945, the Russians promoted the establishment of different parties.
Nevertheless, they still hoped for a victory of the Communists.
- Large-scale industry was expropriated and land reforms were carried out.
- Schools, police and judiciary were changed: people judges, People's Police and new school teachers became the executors of the ideology. These new elites became henchmen of the party in the judiciary, government agencies,
universities and schools. Since 1952, the state security service, Stasi, was enlarged.
- The Communist Party nestled into all areas of life. It emerged Party groups in companies, institutions, residential areas etc. They took over the lead in youth organization and trade unions.
- In 1946, when it became clear that the Communists were not able to achieve a majority through elections, the Communist Party (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) were forced to be combined as the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). The bourgeois parties were brought into line by force. Within the so-called National Front, they were relegated to the auxiliary troops of the SED.
- On June 17th, 1953 the first popular uprising in the Communist sphere took place.
- By 1961, three million people fled from East Germany to West Germany.
Often the refugees belonged to the intellectual elite. They did not want to be brought into line and being enslaved any longer.
- On August, 13th 1961 the Communists made an end to the migration flows by building the Berlin Wall. With minefields and firing order, the GDR as a whole became a big penitentiary.
Approximately every 500 m of the border one death was recorded. One estimated a total of over 2400 dead persons. In Berlin alone, 138 people became victims of the Wall. The youngest were four years old.
(Hertle/Nooke „Die Todesopfer an der Berliner Mauer 1961-1989 Berlin 2009)
In 1976 it came to increased resistance, partly by intellectuals, artists or conscious Christians.
The uprising in the GDR, upheavals in the Soviet Union in 1989, led to the collapse of the communist system in the GDR and on October 3rd, 1990 led to the Reunification.
The developments led by the Communists in the GDR were mostly followed by sharp persecution measures. This happened for example in 1945 in:
- Expropriation of industry and land reform. Thousands of farmers and industrialists were sent to prison or were killed.
- In the wake of the forced merger of the SPD and KPD in 1946, thousands of social democrats were imprisoned.
- Between 1946 and 1948 the communists used terror to enforce the cooptation of the bourgeois parties, which took a death toll after it.
- They enforced the so-called "building of socialism program" in 1952, which led to stricter exploitation of the workers and was a reason for the uprising of June 17th, 1953.
- Following the suppression of the uprising in 1953, executions and convictions took place.
- Commencing deprivation and persecution of the Church, most notably within the young parish in 1952/53. Christians lost any chance of higher education. There were expropriations, Imprisonments and death sentences.
- Collection of the communist youth through rituals and obligations as the introduction of youth initiation, military education and the involvement of youth in the communist youth organizations of the pioneers and the FDJ.
Here again, the Education discrimination unmatched teenager used.
- Lots of terror accompanied the forced collectivization of agriculture in 1959.
- A bleeding wound was the order to shoot at the Berlin Wall and the state border by 1961.
- Final expropriation of the economy by 1972
- In the final phase of the GDR since 1976, particularly mental decomposition measures were used against dissidents.
- Especially in the first years were at least 60 000 deaths within the SBZ / GDR.
Former Nazi concentration camps were designated as so-called special camps by the Russians. At least 12,000 people were killed in Sachsenhausen.
Among them were artists, Social Democrats, Civil politicians and young people.
- About 40 000 political prisoners existed permanently in the GDR.
Particularly notorious were the penitentiaries Bautzen and Waldheim, as well as the women's prison Hoheneck, the military prison Schwedt or the Stasi prison camp X and Hohenschonhausen.
- Children were taken and given to forced adoption.
- Special facilities existed for young people and children, where these were exposed to the brutal attacks of the guards. These facilities were called special children's homes or youth work yards.
- The state security service Stasi had about 80 000 employees and 200 000 informers. (http://www.fes.de/fulltext/historiker/00660001.htm)
4. The freedom of thoughts could not be extinguished despite