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Is it fair, moreover, to punish soldiers even the trial judge acknowledged were "at the end of a long chain of responsibility," while there is scant sign their superiors will be called to account? Only two senior East German officials have gone on trial, both for fraud, and none has gone to jail. The country's former leader, Erich Honecker, fled to Moscow to evade trial, and is living there under diplomatic protection at the Chilean embassy -- while suing the new government to restore his retirement pay. A letter from a West German retiree to one of Heinrich's co-defendants, border guard Andreas Kuhnpast, cynically recalled the Nazi trials. "Hold your head up high," it said. "Once again they're trying to hang the small fry and let the big shots run." Chancellor Helmut Kohl voiced similar sentiments at a lunch with foreign journalists last week. Said Kohl: "While I have no sympathy for people shooting at the borders, it is insufferable that the string pullers are living comfortably and wondering how to get a pension."
Prosecutors and scholars insist that the process is only beginning and that while it would be politically desirable to start from the top down, legally it may be necessary to do the reverse, proving that crimes were committed by functionaries before overseers can be held responsible.
Set against the moral complexities are the simple truths that no one was compelled to become a border guard and not all border guards shot to kill. Three others went on trial with Heinrich. Kuhnpast was given a suspended sentence because his bullets went wide. A third guard shot into the ground, and a fourth told colleagues to shoot only to apprehend; they were acquitted. Heinrich has expressed regret. But he is alive, and Chris Gueffroy, a 20-year- old waiter who only wanted to be free, is dead. Neither could have foreseen that Berlin's Wall would fall nine months later. But once again Germany is insisting that its people should have had a more acute moral vision.