Platform of European Memory and Conscience

Justice 2.0 – Victims of the Iron Curtain

When the newly constituted United Nations Organisation adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948, a charter driven by the need to prevent the repetition of the horrors of WWII, the Soviet Union and its satellite countries abstained from voting. From their seizure of power after WWII until their fall in 1989-­1991, the Communist dictatorships in the so-­called Eastern bloc violated all articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on a daily basis, committing the worst crimes and atrocities against their own citizens.

Until the fall of the regime, people living in the Eastern bloc were denied the most fundamental human rights: right to life, liberty and security of person, freedom from slavery, freedom from torture and inhumane treatment, equality before the law, right to justice, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, freedom of movement, freedom of religion, right to own property, right to education, freedom to choose a profession, active and passive voting rights…

They lived in a permanent situation of lawlessness, state crime and fear, and that at a time regarded by the international community as a time of peace. During the Communist dictatorship in Europe, hundreds of thousands of innocent people were executed, killed or deported, millions were imprisoned, tortured or forced to perform slave labour and tens of millions of people were subjected to other unlawful and inhumane treatment or persecution.

One big group of people who suffered under the Communist regimes were those who tried to escape from their countries and their only option was to leave “illegally”. Our project focuses on such people who became victims – were killed, wounded, arrested during their attempt to escape. Many of them were persecuted only for the idea of such escape – for preparation of illegal escape and so on.

Based on successful cooperation of the Platform and its Members, prosecutor offices and other institutions and as a part of the documentation centre, an on-line project on the victims of the Iron Curtain was created. The project provides information about the people who, due to many circumstances, tried to escape from totalitarianism to freedom and were stopped by the Communist border guard units. Based on archival research we are presenting basic information about those who were unsuccessful, died, were wounded or faced subsequent persecution.

This kind of documentation is possible due to international cooperation, not only because the West-East border was in various countries, but also because victims represented all nations of the former Communist countries.

This online output is of course limited. Offline, in the full scope, it contains all the necessary information to allow the creation of a full picture of each case.

Updated: 30 June 2020

Notes: You can easily filter the data using the search form. The date of the incident is in the DD-MM-YYYY format. The state borders (direction) shows on which frontiers incident occurred and the move of a person in the border area. For closer information about the abbreviations click the explanation tab.