Communists Capitalism

From Deutsche Welle:
"Putting a price on freedom"

During the Cold War, the West German government bought the freedom of East German political prisoners. For the West, the motive was humanitarian, for the East, economic. The deal was politically explosive - Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had to agree to it personally. Under absolute secrecy, the first eight East German prisoners were released to freedom on October 2, 1963. They crossed the inner-German Wartha-Herleshausen border checkpoint on a bus. The communist regime demanded exactly 205,000 deutschmarks (around 100,000 euros) for the human cargo, which was followed by many hundreds of other people. For the first time, this chapter in the division of Germany is the subject of a museum exhibition. "Bought free - Ways out of Prison in East Germany" can be seen until the end of March 2013 at the former Marienfelde resettlement center for East German refugees in Berlin, which today is a memorial. To avoid even the appearance of state human trafficking, the West German government commissioned the charitable wing of the Lutheran Church with the financial details for the transfer of East German prisoners. This cover was possible because West German church communities had materially supported congregations in East Berlin since 1957.

The Ministry for All-German Affairs, renamed the Ministry for Inner-German Affairs in 1969, was responsible at the political level in the West. From the outset, Berlin-born lawyer Ludwig Rehlinger made a great contribution to buying the freedom of prisoners of conscience. A comprehensive video interview about his experiences as a negotiator can be seen in the exhibition. By the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, some 87,000 East Germans had ended up behind bars because they wanted to escape or were otherwise considered politically "unreliable" in the eyes of the East Berlin authorities. The West bought the freedom of nearly 34,000 of these "enemies of socialism" - the East German terminology for the inmates. Only the first busload of 1963 was paid in cash - following which there was a barter transaction: people in exchange for goods. Depending on what the shortage-plagued East German economy needed, West Germany supplied food or petroleum. Diamonds also found their way from West to East.

^ This is just another example of Communist hypocrisy. They claim they are of and for the people and yet the people they are supposedly for and about always try to flee it. In this case the Communists decided to go one-step further and make money from it - which is capitalism in its purest form. Communism is only good on paper and has never been and will never be good in practice. ^

http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,16159888,00.html