It’s a movie.Actually the movie was criticized by a number of former GDR dissidents as unrealistic -- not because of any of the bad things the Stasi was depicted as doing but because there was no evidence that even a single Stasi officer showed the remorse and restraint of the main character -- such actions would have gotten the officer punished himself of course.
What happened on the GDRs borders is often cited as their most violent human rights abuse. Of course it is deplorable to set death traps for citizens who want to leave your country, because you need their skilled labor to prevent your economy from collapsing. What are the EU member states doing these days? Conspiring to chain boats that try to keep people from drowning in the Mediterranean. They prefer to have them drown. The Iron Curtain has just moved, and is a body of water these days, or a Mexican desert.
That analogy is broken. One was an attempt by states to keep their own people from leaving, essentially slavery, and other is an attempt by states to prevent others from entering, which may be uncharitable and/or motivated by xenophobia, but entirely different from the first case.
