At the meeting of the administrative committee on Tuesday, November 13, the CDU parliamentary group unanimously instructed the administration to draw up a proposal for a "visible sign" in the first quarter of 2008. A monument, memorial stone or plaque could be erected in Salzgitter-Bad, where the office was based.

In the explanatory statement to the CDU motion, it is made clear that the realization that the history of the GDR is in danger of being forgotten, especially by the younger generation, is unacceptable. In recent weeks, further shoot-to-kill orders from the GDR regime have once again become public, with which special companies of the Ministry of State Security were instructed to shoot at fleeing people. More than 700 people were killed at the Wall and barbed wire.

As a reminder: just a few months after construction of the Berlin Wall began, the Central Registration Office of the State Justice Administrations in Salzgitter, which was affiliated to the Braunschweig Public Prosecutor General's Office, began operations on November 24, 1961. Under the impression of the political events and the first victims of the shoot-to-kill order, the justice ministers and senators of the federal states had assigned the office the task of registering certain regime-related violent crimes committed in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) and securing evidence. This was intended to create the conditions for later prosecution of those responsible and to raise awareness of injustice among potential perpetrators.

With the re-establishment of state unity in October 1990, the registration activities in Salzgitter came to an end. The office, which has since continued to operate under the name "Central Documentation Office of the State Justice Administrations" and was relocated to the Braunschweig Higher Regional Court in 1994, was given numerous new tasks. For example, in the first few years after "reunification", around 40,000 investigation files, which had been created, for example, on suspicion of homicides at the inner-German border, for obstruction of justice or abuse in the prison system, had to be copied and handed over to the responsible public prosecutor's offices in the new federal states for criminal evaluation.

The data material, which was originally recorded in a coded index card system, has now been transferred to a user-friendly computer system. In addition, however, the files are still available as an original source of information. In its entirety, the data collection is of great value for future historical documentation. This has already been recognized by numerous scientists who regularly use the existing data material for research purposes.