Leo Lis shot near the Nordbahnhof

Leo Lis was born on 10 May 1924 in Beuthen (today Bytom, Poland) and lived with his wife and children in Hennersdorf in Saxony, where he worked as a milker on an agricultural cooperative.

On 19 September 1969 he left his family and travelled by train to East Berlin. At about 8 p.m. the next evening he entered the border area near the Nordbahnhof. He went round a dog run, but set off the alarm when he crawled under a signal fence.

A sentry who came down from his tower could not find him in the dark, but guards on two other towers opened heavy fire, so wildly that the sentry in the strip had to take cover and one of the towers itself was hit. Lis crossed the patrol road, the control strip and the anti-tank obstacles before he lay still.

The guards fired 78 rounds in total. Leo Lis was shot through the chest; a medic pronounced him dead before he was taken out of the border strip. One bullet struck a garden window in West Berlin, narrowly missing an elderly couple watching television.

His wife was only told on 27 September, after he had been cremated, and was made to keep the funeral small. The guards involved received a medal; in 1997 the Berlin public prosecutor dropped the case against them.