Honecker Ends Historic Visit to W. Germany
East German leader Erich Honecker returned home on Friday to end a historic five-day visit to West Germany, with Honecker expressing the hope that the border that divides the two Germanys may one day be free of frontier barriers and fortifications.
In parting remarks, Honecker said that “the borders are not as they should be” because the German states belong to rival blocs, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact.
“The day will come when borders no longer divide us but unite us, as the border between the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and Poland,” he had added on Thursday in a speech in his native Saarland, now a part of West Germany.
West German government spokesman Friedhelm Ost welcomed the statement, which he said confirmed Honecker’s private remarks to Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Bonn earlier in the week.
Honecker ended his trip to West Germany by visiting the site of the former Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, north of Munich.
Honecker laid a wreath at the camp to the victims of Nazi persecution. Standing on the dusty former parade ground, surrounded by barbed wire fences and watchtowers, he talked to survivors of the camp.
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