Historians have yet to establish precisely how many people died trying to escape from East Berlin over the Wall. Officials from the famous Checkpoint Charlie Museum say there have been at least 200 victims, while another research center in Potsdam has confirmed only 136 deaths. Because the defense system surrounding the Wall wasn’t enough to stop people from trying to escape, East-German authorities granted border soldiers the right to use fire arms whenever they detected escape attempts. Through an order dated October 1973, soldiers were told that people trying to cross the wall were criminals and that they must be shot; according to the order, soldiers also had the right and even the obligation to use fire arms on women and children, and they weren’t required to use warning shots. The first deaths Between 1961 and 1989, 90 people were shot and killed trying to cross the Berlin Wall. Soldiers lost the right to use fire arms in case of escape attempts only in April 1989, 7 months before the Fall. The first person who died trying to cross the Wall into West Berlin was Ida Siekmann, aged 58. She lived in an apartment in East Berlin, but – according to official city documents – the street and the sidewalk in front of her building belonged to West Berlin. So, in theory, people could walk through the front door of their East Berlin building right into West Berlin. This is why East German authorities decided to close all these exits. However, in the first days after the Wall’s construction began, people would simply jump out of the windows onto the streets or use ropes to come down the window, helped by Western policemen and firefighters. Ida Siekmann, whose family lived in West Berlin, jumped out of the window from her 3rd floor apartment, but the firefighters below were unable to catch her with the safety net. The woman died from internal injuries. The first person to