Operation Vermin

During this operation, between May and June 1952, citizens the government described as “smugglers, money launderers and reactionaries“ and their families were forcibly resettled from the Inner German border to the country’s interior.

Reason and background for this action was the “resolution concerning measures along the demarcation line between the German Democratic Republic and the Western occupation zones of Germany” passed by the Council of Ministers on May 26, 1952 and published in issue 65 of the Federal Law Gazette on May 27, 1952.

His handwritten note to Otto Funke, second chairman of the SED in Thuringia, about the number of people to be forcibly resettled into the East German interior in the course of the operation is often cited as a prime example of the inhuman or dehumanizing views of the GDR government.

This would be the result of the Commission work to exterminate the vermin.” (Otto, General König, hat mir gerade diese Zahlen gegeben.

Because of this, the forced resettlement operations not only affected citizens with contacts in the West, churchgoers, former members of the NSDAP and its organizations, but also farmers who failed to meet their quotas and people who made any kind of negative comment about the state.

The neighbors at their new homes were told that the new arrivals were criminals, which meant that it was initially impossible for them to lead a normal social life.