Peter Kreitlow – shot by Soviet soldiers near Nieder Neuendorf

On the evening of 23 January 1963 Peter Kreitlow and three friends from East Berlin went to a dance in Hennigsdorf, north-west of the city. There they met Bernd K., a local who had already been imprisoned for preparing an escape. He persuaded them to try to reach West Berlin with him that same night.

Led by Bernd K., who knew the area, the five crawled across the frozen Havel Canal between Hennigsdorf and Nieder Neuendorf and moved slowly through a snow-covered wood, away from roads and paths, towards the border. Long before they reached it, two soldiers of a Soviet unit stationed in Nieder Neuendorf stopped them. According to a Stasi report, the Soviet guards fired at the group at around 0.30 a.m., roughly 2,000 metres from the border installations.

Peter Kreitlow, 20, was hit several times, including in the head, and died shortly after midnight. The others were arrested and in May 1963 sentenced by the Berlin city court, in a closed hearing, to prison terms of between ten and eighteen months.

The GDR authorities handled the case with particular secrecy, since a Soviet patrol had killed a young East German: no post-mortem was carried out, and a Stasi officer arranged the burial. Investigations after 1990 could not identify the soldiers. As far as is known, Peter Kreitlow is the only refugee at the Berlin Wall who was shot by members of the Soviet forces.