Berlin Wall - Hermsdorf

 

The Berlin Wall was up for 28 years, beginning with a barbed wire barrier. When it came down in 1989, it consisted of concrete blocks, mesh fencing, signal fencing, anti-vehicle trenches, barbed wire, bunkers, observation towers, spikes, electrified fences and the ‘death strip’. 

Of the 5,000 people that escaped, 140 of them died trying. Reports of fatal shootings were often intentionally misreported to families with falsified death certificates issued. Families who knew what happened were threatened into silence and kept under surveillance by the Stasi (secret police). The truth for many families would only be revealed in the 1990s when the East German archives were opened for prosecution. 

As quickly as the wall went up in 1961, dividing the city and separating families, it came down just as fast in 1989. Less than a year later Germany was unified. Today it is a prosperous and free country with a vibrant and cosmopolitan capital city.

I leave you with a few more short stories of bravery, ingenuity and victory:

• Fuelled by love, Heinz Meixner, a West Berlin resident in love with his East Berlin girlfriend, hired a convertible and removed its windshield and deflated the tyres to lower the car. He then drove to Checkpoint Charlie with his girlfriend and her mom hiding in the back. When his car was being checked, Heinz hit the gas pedal and drove the car beneath the steel barrier to safety in the West.

• Banned from performing due to his anti-communist beliefs, trapeze artist, Horst Klein, climbed above the border patrol guards onto disused power cables and carefully walked his way to freedom.

• Ingo Bethke and his friend silently paddled their way across the river using an air mattress as a raft. In another location, Ingo’s brother, Holger, together with a friend, shot an arrow with a line tied to it from an attic to the West. Another Bethke brother, already in the West, tied the line around a chimney and the pair ziplined across using woollen jumpers.

• Crashing through the Wall at full-throttle was Harry Deterling's only intent. A train engineer, he hatched a plan to use a steam locomotive to smash through the crossing into the West. Bearing down on the crossing at 50mph (80kph), he disconnected the brake lines, so the locomotive couldn’t be stopped. The train came to a halt in a West Berlin neighbourhood where Harry, his wife, their four children and 26 other people safely disembarked.

I feel honoured to have walked this path and aim to always remember the hardships and losses endured, the courage needed, the heroic attempts and the sacrifices made for the sake of freedom.