This article is a reply to a statement by Elke Schwinger in WeltTrends 31. <br>The author tries to strike the balance between "coming to terms with the past" and the role of criminal law in this process in Germany. The principle of prohibition of retroactive laws, fixed in the 1990 German Unification Treaty and in the Constitution, had been broken in the trials against the "Mauerschützen" (border guards) in German criminal courts since 1990. There is an artificially constructed past which does not correspond to the reality of the border regime before 1989. <br>The author underlines that today the criminal law is misused for political aims within the German unification process.