With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Bulgaria confirms Cold War border shootings of Germans

Bulgaria confirmed for the first time on Friday that East Germans and others trying to flee the Soviet bloc for the West were killed on its soil during the Cold War.

"We came upon two cases of East German citizens killed while attempting to escape via Bulgaria - one in 1974 and another in 1988," Ekaterina Boncheva, a member of an official committee looking into communist-era secret service archives, told journalists.

Border police officers were rewarded for catching or shooting at people trying to flee the country, according to another committee member Valeri Katsunov.
Read entire article at http://www.thelocal.de