Germany marked the 30th anniversary Saturday of the opening of the Berlin Wall, a pivotal moment in the events that brought down Communism in eastern Europe.
Leaders from Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic attended a ceremony at Bernauer Strasse — where one of the last parts of the Berlin Wall remains — before placing roses in the once-fearsome barrier that divided the city for 28 years.
Here are the details on some of the most memorable escapes from East Berlin.
I can't find it now, but I remember reading a story many years ago about a fellow who got drunk, stole a truck, and made a mad dash through the kill zone somewhere along the border between the two Germanies (might not have been Berlin). The truck was riddled with bullets, the tires were blown out, but he made it to West Germany - where he ultimately got a job driving a beer truck.
4 comments:
Recently, I met a German woman who said she had lived behind the wall, and that I was misinformed about it. She said life was not bad under the Soviets, and that no one tried to escape. I know the truth. She is Lefty, anti-Trump, anti-wall in America. I'd like to hear her reaction to the current rememberances.
Possibly she was a party member, Deborah, no doubt pining for the days of special privilege.
East Germany was the most repressive of the communist states in the Soviet Bloc, and the only one with a wall. I once typed up an interview my husband conducted with a Polish farmer who gave up his farm to the State, loaded his herd of milk cows onto a train, and with the help of cases of vodka and lots of money, brought his entire herd into West Germany, never to return. It was relatively easy to cross the border with the other Soviet-dominated Eastern European countries if you weren't military and you had permission (and while we were in Munich, we were warned when exploring the countryside not to wander into then-Czechoslovakia by mistake because there were lots of unwatched back roads). Not East Germany, though. People in East Germany were there for life, unless they found an escape hatch.
Interesting, Rebecca. I was not aware of the relative lack of security in some of the other bloc countries (relative to East Germany, that is).
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