“A symbol of civil courage and commitment to human rights, self-determination, freedom of faith and of conscience”: so says a joint declaration signed by Cardinal Karl Lehmann and Manfred Kock, respectively presidents of the German Episcopal Conference and the Council of the Evangelical Churches, and issued on 16 June to commemorate the victims of the repression of 17 June 1953 in East Berlin. A popular demonstration pressing for an improvement of the living conditions for manual workers in the former DDR was brutally crushed by Soviet tanks. “Over 100 people were killed on that occasion”, the declaration recalls, “over a thousand were imprisoned as ‘political prisoners’, and tens of thousands fled the country”. Among the victims were “Catholics and Protestants of the DDR, members engaged in student associations. They opposed the Communist Party which, in violation of the Constitution, repressed Christianity in order to impose a materialist conception of the world.” Although not “in the front ranks of the demonstrators”, the churches on that occasion took part “in the struggle for freedom, and in the preparations for 17 June, expressing their whole-hearted solidarity with the victims and asking for the release of those detained”. “This episode of courage, fear and hope”, continue Lehmann and Kock, “cannot be forgotten”, still less today in a period in which “the burden of the divided past is greater than many would have believed possible” and in which “the consequences and the human, economic and social problems of German division shall not be overcome for a long time to come, in spite of the enormous efforts”. “The memory of 17 June”, conclude the two presidents, “thus represents an exhortation to all of us to spare no effort in promoting the internal unity of Germany”.
