East Germany told its border guards to spare women and children trying to escape the country but gave rewards of cash and vacations to those who killed fleeing men, former guards have testified.
The disclosures were made by two of the four former guards on trial for the fatal shooting of a would-be escapee in February 1989.The ex-soldiers went on trial Monday, charged with gunning down 20-year-old Chris Gueffroy just nine months before the Berlin Wall came down.
Gueffroy is the last person known to have died in an escape attempt at the Berlin Wall. The trial is the first stemming from the deaths of East Germans shot trying to flee life under Communist rule.
"I was very shocked," ex-guard Andreas Kuehnpast said on the stand as he sometimes tearfully recounted the shooting. "I really didn't know what to do."