- BERLIN (AFP) - German citizens
showed extraordinary audacity and imagination in their efforts to overcome
the Berlin Wall and escape from East Germany. More than 40,000 in all succeeded
in doing so.
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- The museum devoted to the history of the Wall, situated
at the most famous crossing point between East and West, Checkpoint Charlie,
is a testament to these sometimes almost incredible exploits.
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- Vehicles were often used, such as an old Volkswagen "beetle"
on exhibit, its fuel tank modified to allow someone totally hunched and
doubled-up to hide in there.
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- An estimated 300 people escaped by this means: under
the back seat, in a false floor or even strapped underneath the vehicle.
This meant having to endure extreme discomfort for hours on end, without
a cough or a sneeze which might alert the East German border guards.
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- As the Volkspolizei (Vopos), the German police, discovered
such hiding places, others had to be found. A woman artist from Magdeburg
hid herself in the loudspeaker cabinet of a visiting Dutch singer. A Frenchman
hid his fiancee inside a large suitcase.
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- The walls of the museum are covered with pictures of
lovers ready to take any risks to meet up with each other again -- even
at the expense of others.
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- One West German separated from his East German girlfriend
went to the trouble of seducing a West German who resembled her. He then
took the woman for a weekend to East Berlin where he stole her papers and
passed them to his girlfriend, allowing the latter to escape to the West.
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- Many of these escapes under the noses of the East German
authorities required reliable accomplices. In the first two years of the
Wall, hundreds of people on both sides helped in the escapes quite disinterestedly.
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- But people like the West German Kurt Woldert, who helped
55 fugitives, gradually gave place to commercial enterprises.
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- A favourite method was the underground tunnel, because
it made a mass escape possible. In 1964, 57 people were able to escape
in one go from the cellar of a house near the Wall. About 10 different
escape tunnels in all were dug.
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- Others chose to plunge into the Spree river which winds
its way through the Berlin city centre, coinciding at some points with
the dividing line of the Wall. But in 1965 the East German authorities
installed metal spikes in the water over a distance of 25 kilometres (17
miles) and hidden just below the surface.
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- Hundreds attempted to take a marine route via the Baltic
Sea, and about 40 succeeded, including a diving instructor who built his
own miniature submarine with which he was able to reach Denmark after a
five-hour voyage.
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- Among the most ingenious escape devices was a makeshift
cable-car or ski-lift system which allowed a whole family to abseil over
the Wall on a wire stretched from the toilets of a ministry building.
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- At least 250 people died in Berlin alone, many of them
shot at the Wall, and 960 died trying to escape East Germany as a whole.
The last of these was Chris Gueffroy, who died in February 1989, nine months
before the Wall fell, as he tried to climb over the barbed wire.
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