‘We want to be free men!’ East German uprising in an exhibition

TIRANA, March 21 -“We want to be free men!” East German uprising of June 17, 1953.” The poster exhibition commemorating the 60th anniversary of the East German uprising is brought to Tirana by the German Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship in East Germany.
It will remain open at the premises of the German embassy in Tirana from its inauguration on March 26 until April 12. The exhibition can be visited from Monday to Tuesday from 14.00 to 16.00 at the German embassy in Tirana.
June 17, 1953 marked a watershed moment in the Cold War and in the annals of East German communism. In Berlin and elsewhere, factory workers and other dissatisfied citizens of the GDR organized mass demonstrations against their Stalinist leader Walter Ulbricht and his government. The demonstrators’ demands for reforms, free elections and the abolition of borders within Germany were violently crushed.
For many years, Berlin was the focus of accounts about the uprising on June 17th, 1953. Few know that thousands of people took to the streets not only in the capital, but also all over the German Democratic Republic.