They are the forgotten victims of the Berlin Wall. The East Germans who were killed attempting to flee through Bulgaria. At least 18 were shot by border guards, mowed down with as few scruples as those murdered along the death strip that was Germany's inner border. Gunter Pschera was killed by a Bulgarian border guard in 1967. It starts with the smell, the cloying odor of decay, growing behind the brown steel doors, its dull impact becoming more penetrating in the semidarkness. Finally, the next steel door reveals the source of the smell, the bodies of three men, shockingly naked, ready to be autopsied. The walls and floor of the basement room, the size of a large kitchen, are tiled. This is Sofia, and this is the old autopsy chamber at the city's Military Medical Academy. The room is still in use today. He was lying in this room, on one of these tables: 19-year-old Michael Weber, 1.70 meters (5' 6") tall, a muscular young man with a normal build and little body fat. Weber's body was brought in discreetly through an access tunnel and removed just as inconspicuously. His parents came to Sofia to see their son one last time, before the body was incinerated and the remains flown back to Leipzig via Berlin. According to the report filed by Bulgaria's notorious State Security Agency on July 14, 1989, both parents behaved "very reasonably." They gazed at their dead son. They were shown the body from the side that had remained relatively recognizable. What they couldn't see is detailed in the autopsy report, prepared by Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Slatko Nikolov Kolev, the head of the forensic medicine division of the Bulgarian People's Army. The Webers' son was killed by a bullet fired at close range, perhaps 1.5 to 2 meters (5 to 7 feet). It crashed through the left side of his face, his neck and his chest, before coming to rest in the back, just below the right armpit. It shattered his cheekbone, upper jaw and two cervical vertebrae, crushed his spinal cord and ripped apart his chest aorta and his right lung. Michael Weber bled to death in the foothills of the Pirin Mountains in southern Bulgaria, 150 meters (492 feet) from the Greek border. The autopsy report states that he died quickly.
They are the forgotten victims of the Berlin Wall. The East Germans who were killed attempting to flee through Bulgaria. At least 18 were shot by border guards, mowed down with as few scruples as those murdered along the death strip that was Germany's inner border.
Gunter Pschera was killed by a Bulgarian border guard in 1967. It starts with the smell, the cloying odor of decay, growing behind the brown steel doors, its dull impact becoming more penetrating in the semidarkness. Finally, the next steel door reveals the source of the smell, the bodies of three men, shockingly naked, ready to be autopsied. The walls and floor of the basement room, the size of a large kitchen, are tiled. This is Sofia, and this is the old autopsy chamber at the city's Military Medical Academy. The room is still in use today.
He was lying in this room, on one of these tables: 19-year-old Michael Weber, 1.70 meters (5' 6") tall, a muscular young man with a normal build and little body fat. Weber's body was brought in discreetly through an access tunnel and removed just as inconspicuously. His parents came to Sofia to see their son one last time, before the body was incinerated and the remains flown back to Leipzig via Berlin. According to the report filed by Bulgaria's notorious State Security Agency on July 14, 1989, both parents behaved "very reasonably." They gazed at their dead son. They were shown the body from the side that had remained relatively recognizable.
What they couldn't see is detailed in the autopsy report, prepared by Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Slatko Nikolov Kolev, the head of the forensic medicine division of the Bulgarian People's Army. The Webers' son was killed by a bullet fired at close range, perhaps 1.5 to 2 meters (5 to 7 feet). It crashed through the left side of his face, his neck and his chest, before coming to rest in the back, just below the right armpit. It shattered his cheekbone, upper jaw and two cervical vertebrae, crushed his spinal cord and ripped apart his chest aorta and his right lung. Michael Weber bled to death in the foothills of the Pirin Mountains in southern Bulgaria, 150 meters (492 feet) from the Greek border. The autopsy report states that he died quickly.
The border guards had no option to follow their conscience and many reasons to chase their wallet. The joys of totalitarianism. keep to the Fen Causeway
