| November 7, 2009 Memorial stones unveiled for victims of Berlin Wall
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(NECN/APTV) - Two days ahead of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first three memorial stones commemorating the casualties of German separation were unveiled on the outskirts of Berlin.
136 people were killed trying to cross the separation line between East and West Germany between 1961 to 1989, according to the records of the Berlin based Foundation Berlin Wall.
One of the those was Horst Kullack, 23, who was shot by border guards on December 31st, 1971 between the suburban village of Grossziethen and Berlin' s neighborhood Tempelhof. Kullack's brother Frank described the memorial as "a very sad moment."
The border guards who shot Kullack were tried in 1995 and received an 18 month suspended sentence, according to his father, Willi.
Another story remembered on Saturday was that of Herbert Kiebler, a resident of Mahlow, a town just few kilometers away.
After a drunken night in a pub in June 1975, Kiebler wrote a farewell letter to his mother and set off towards the guarded border.
The family was informed by authorities that Kiebler committed suicide in Potsdam, miles (kilometers) away from the border but when they received the body they claim to have seen a number of bullet wounds.
Their suspicions were confirmed when the old archives opened after the fall of the Wall. "I hope that something like this will never happen again. That no mother or sister has to loose the most loved one,"
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