100,000 Died in E. Germany for Political Acts
About 100,000 people died in captivity or were executed for political offenses in 44 years of Stalinist-style dictatorship in East Germany, an official investigation has found.
A report by the united German government, excerpts of which were published Saturday in the newspaper Berliner Zeitung, said 65,000 of the victims died in Soviet military internment camps or during their transport there after World War II.
The Family Ministry inquiry determined that 756 men, women and children were sentenced to death by Soviet occupation courts in the first few years after the war for dissident acts.
Several mass graves apparently containing the bones of Soviet internment victims were found in eastern Germany after the 1989 democratic revolution. But there had been no formal estimate of the number of victims of Communist rule or details on how they died.
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