The Berlin Wall (49 page)

If there was one group peculiarly suited to the escape business, it was
the student community. Young, usually fit, mostly without day jobs or family responsibilities, students enjoyed access to extensive, even worldwide networks of like-minded and often influential contacts. They were also, in many cases, possessed of valuable specialist knowledge, in languages, engineering, the law, and so on.

The original impulse of the three main founding members of the FU group—law students Detlef Girrmann and Dieter Thieme, and a little later theology student Dodo Köhler—was based on mutual student loyalty. Before 13 August, a substantial number of the FU’s students—roughly 500—commuted from the East. The three conspirators decided to get in touch with these ‘Eastern’ students and if desired to find ways for them to escape to the West and finish their studies.

Girrmann and Thieme were both in their early thirties—old for students, even in Germany. In fact, they worked for the university administration, specifically dealing with welfare issues affecting the Eastern ‘ex-students’. This gave them access to the university’s registry and thus to all necessary addresses, personal details and so on—as well as to photographs of the subjects.
⁴

The founders were all West Berliners. After being effectively banned from the East after 23 August, they had to find students with West German or foreign passports to trace the ‘ex-students’. These contact-makers became known as ‘runners’.

The initial stage of contacting fellow students marooned in the East was a risky business. One of the ‘runners’, later intimately involved in many escapes, was Burkhart Veigel, a medical student with a West German passport. He described the normal method of approach once they had found their ‘ex-student’ (‘Ex’) targets:

It was of course not without danger for the runner, or for the potential escaper, for if the
Stasi
…got wind of it, then both would be arrested and tried, the one as escape organiser, the other for ‘fleeing the Republic’. And so every runner visiting an ‘ex-student’ had to have a harmless story ready, a reason why he was visiting, e.g. to ask whether the ‘ex’ wanted to give him a final term paper, or whether the ‘ex’ could, despite everything, come to the West of the city for a meeting with their professor. The fake story had to be absolutely credible, but also sufficiently harmless, so that the
runner looked at worst like a well-meaning idiot and never as a ‘criminal’ (in the East’s jargon). Only when you were certain that no unwanted other was listening in, or the runner could be sure that the ‘ex’ was ‘safe’, e.g. not a spy or someone who had meanwhile been ‘turned’ by the
Stasi
, only then could you go very cautiously on to the next stage…
⁵

Once it was decided that the contact was safe, then the possibilities for coming to the West could be explained and instructions given. This was done with an almost bureaucratic thoroughness. Forms were filled out, personal details put on file. Other important information could come from the official student database.

During initial contact with an ‘Ex’, a password and simple codes would be agreed, to keep contact time and incriminating conversation to a minimum. This was especially important when arranging an escape rendezvous. According to Veigel, the escaper would receive a phone call from, say, ‘Uncle Josef’, who would recommend a particular radio programme. This meant to meet exactly when that programme began. Or the caller would ask if the ‘Ex’ wanted a little ‘fresh air’, to which the right answer was ‘Yes, but unfortunately I have a bit of a cold’.

Timing in these cases was very strict. Helpers were instructed not to wait more than a few minutes. In a totalitarian society such as the GDR had become, anyone seen loitering soon came under observation, particularly if dressed in Western clothes. If the delay seemed too long, the helper would leave and another rendezvous would be organised. If the problem occurred yet again, contact would be broken.

The actual methods used to effect escapes varied. Any escape project was known as a ‘tour’, whatever form it took.

The most popular way of getting people to the West was by providing them with forged documents. At least in the beginning, the so-called ‘Girrmann Group’
⁶
could rely on the toleration, even the unofficial support, of the West Berlin and West German authorities. There was, all the same, no denying that these groups often operated at the limits of legality. The acts they undertook would have amounted, under normal circumstances, to fraud, forgery and criminal impersonation.

But in those weeks after the 13 August, West Berliners and democrats all over the world accepted that the situation was not ‘normal’. The
student group’s foreign contacts were extensive. Foreign and West German passports could, of course, be ‘borrowed’, especially if the real bearer bore a physical similarity to the would-be escaper. Through sympathetic individuals in foreign diplomatic and official circles, they could also get hold of blank passports. Obtaining foreign documents became even more important after the end of September, when entry and exit visas were made compulsory for West German residents travelling to the East.

Veigel himself, supplied with the codename ‘Schwarzer’ (Black), did not just work as a ‘runner’ to East Berlin. He also visited foreign cities to collect batches of blank passports from contacts. One such trip was to Zurich. There Veigel met with Rolf Bracher, the son of a Swiss general, who used his position to obtain Swiss identity documents. Bracher had provided the same service to refugees from Soviet-controlled Hungary after the failure of the 1956 revolution.

Sometimes foreign sympathisers came to them. Veigel recalls a man arriving from Belgium with a suitcase full of passports and an official stamp from his home city, which could be used to certify the documents. In some cases—Veigel recounts with wonder—the people supplying these precious items had performed the selfsame service twenty years earlier, for refugees fleeing the Nazis.

Between two and three hundred blank passports were acquired in this way. The group preferred documents belonging to smaller European countries. To use British, American or French passports would risk embarrassing the occupation powers in their dealings with the East.

The group had quickly become adept at ‘adapting’ existing passports, but such gifts made their task much easier. Once documents had been delivered to East Berlin, the escapers had to acquire ‘biographies’ to fit their passport details. In the case of foreign passports, they were schooled in a few common phrases in their alleged languages. Finally they were taught to handle the exit formalities and to deal with any awkward questions from East German border officials.

For the first five months after 13 August, the ‘passport’ method worked very well, but it was not the only way to the West.

There were other routes. Via the sewers, for instance. Even before 13
August, these were often blocked with grilles. Many had been installed in the 1950s to block the movements of criminal gangs that smuggled cigarettes and other contraband goods between the Soviet and the Western sectors. The grilles were sturdy enough, but the Western students were determined. They came from the West Berlin side with hack-saws and cut holes in them.

The first escape organisers to use this route had been a group of senior high-school students, back at the beginning of September 1961. Like the FU conspirators, they were seeking ways of helping friends trapped in the East after 13 August, who wanted to get to West Berlin for the new school year. These teenagers—working on their own—learned by trial and error how to recognise sewer manholes. Then they sought a suitable sewer that ran directly from East to West.

Again, holders of West German passports had to do the research work in the East. They eventually found a manhole on the other side, 500 yards from the border. It was located in a factory area, so at night there was no one about. From here the sewer ran beneath the border into Kreuzberg. It lay 300 yards inside West Berlin in an abandoned lot. The entire run was therefore about half a mile. The sewer, following the street line, underwent a gentle thirty-degree bend after the border, so anyone climbing in or out on the Western side would not be spotted by sharp-eyed guards in the East. It was perfect. There was just one major problem: a grille some way into the East that had to be worked on without the
Vopos
noticing.

It took some days before the grille could be sawed through sufficiently for fugitives to wriggle through from the East. The biggest problem was that, having waded through a working sewer for half a mile or so, those who emerged on the Western side were covered in waste and reeked to high heaven. A laundry service had to be organised, since the last thing the high-school kids wanted was for their parents to find out. They might stop the operation.

Over some days, an unknown but substantial number of the boys from the East were brought through the sewer to safety by their classmates. It was an amazing achievement for a group of teenagers, operating without plans of the sewers or professional tools or other special know-how, and without the
Vopos
finding out. But—largely because of the odour
problem—the operation could not, in fact, be kept totally secret. The ‘Girrmann Group’ had an efficient intelligence system.

Dieter Thieme, one of the FU students who had founded the organisation, decided to use the sewer route in a much more ambitious form. The passport method was excellent, but there were sometimes complications. For instance, it might be difficult to fit an existing passport to a would-be escaper. Or, if the escaper was from outside East Berlin, there might be no convenient flat in the city to use as a staging point, where the essential ‘training’ needed (including the tedious and problematic learning of the passport-holder’s ‘biography’) could be carried out.

The sewer route had its own problems, naturally. The numbers Thieme and his colleagues hoped to bring through in this way were large. So, a correspondingly large number of runners had to be sent East.

With the increase in numbers, the danger of deliberate or accidental betrayal grew. The Westerners decided that escapers should be given as short a notice of their trip as possible. Best if they were told on the day they were leaving, rather than have them toss and turn through a last night in East Berlin, a night during which they might be tempted to share their fears with someone who turned out to be a
Stasi
agent.

This increased the safety margin, but the organisational burden was immense. In one case, a runner with several escapers to notify during a single busy day in East Berlin was forced to summon two female students out of a college lecture hall. Had he waited until they got home, the schedule would have been too tight.

Normally, one small group of escapers would begin to enter the sewer every half an hour during the hours of darkness, using the manhole first discovered by the high-school students the previous month. Everything was arranged in advance by the ‘Girrmann Group’. Each escaper was assigned a group and a time, and informed accordingly. Precision and punctuality were all-important.

There was another crucial service required from the Western side. After the planned escapes were finished for that night, someone had to replace the heavy manhole cover on the East Berlin side. Since West Berliners were not allowed into the East, West Germans or foreigners had to cross the border to do this.

Two courageous students volunteered for this role in the sewer project. The first was a student from West Germany, codenamed ‘Langer’ (Tall) and the second an Austrian called Dieter Wohlfahrt. ‘Langer’ would ride through to East Berlin on a Vespa motor scooter, while Wohlfahrt would use a vehicle left in East Berlin by a previous escaper. This second vehicle played an important role quite apart from its value as transport. Wohlfahrt would drive it to the deserted area where the manhole was situated and meet ‘Langer’. He would park the car right in front of the manhole so that the opening could no longer be observed. Then he and his colleague would laboriously lift the manhole cover, ready for the first party of escapers.

Wohlfahrt would conceal himself elsewhere in the factory yard. ‘Langer’ would stay in the open to greet this initial group, who were scheduled to arrive just after dark, around eight p.m. He would guide the first of the often terrified fugitives down into the sewer, telling them how to use the rough ladder and which direction to head in. Then, once he was confident the group could cope, he would jump on to his Vespa and ride the two blocks to the Heinrich-Heine-Strasse checkpoint. Within minutes, having shown his West German passport, he would be safely back in the West. There he would warn the organisers that their first customers were already wading slowly and gingerly through the stinking darkness beneath the lethal border.

A small reception committee would advance as far as the hole in the grille, to assist the incoming escapers as necessary. The crossing was not as easy as it may sound. The tunnel started out about 160 cm. (a little over five feet) high at its eastern entrance, but slowly narrowed until, as they covered the final stretch to safety, the escapers were bent low above the muck-encrusted surface. However, so long as they kept going, within a few minutes they would breathe fresh air on the Western side. Those reception-committee members who kept vigil at the grille, on the other hand, were forced to wait for long periods between groups, knee-deep or worse in the muck. When Senator Lipschitz, the students’ special friend in high places, was informed of this, he ensured that these noble volunteers were provided with the same high rubber wading boots used by the Berlin sanitation department’s regular employees.

The last escaper of each group was obliged to wait behind, then greet
and instruct the first of the next. Wohlfahrt, the Austrian helper, would observe the operation from his hideout, ready to intervene in case of serious problems, but otherwise not showing himself until the last escape group had left. This was almost always after midnight, which was why Wohlfahrt had been assigned this task—as a foreign national, he could stay in East Berlin until two a.m., whereas West Germans had to be back on the other side by twelve.