Shun East German people taking lives (9)
I believe the answer is:
ostracise
'shun' is the definition.
('shun'->'ostracize' is in my internal thesaurus and 'ize'->'ise')
'east german people taking lives' is the wordplay.
'east german' becomes 'ost' ('east' in German).
'people' becomes 'race'.
'taking' is an insertion indicator.
'lives' becomes 'is' ('be' can be a synonym of 'live').
'race' placed around 'is' is 'racise'.
'ost'+'racise'='OSTRACISE'
(Other definitions for ostracise that I've seen before include "Shun, exclude" , "Banish from group" , "bar" , "Cast out, blackball" , "Socrates and I are made to exclude from society" .)