The greatest mass escape from East Berlin during the period of the Berlin Wall occurred on the nights of October 3 and 4, 1964. It all started because a boy wanted to reunite with his girl. Joachim Neumann had escaped in 1961 using a borrowed passport, but he had to leave his girlfriend Christa behind. His goal became to get her out by way of a tunnel. His first two attempts failed and on the second one Christa was caught at the tunnel entrance and sentenced to 16 months in prison. Joachim’s third attempt started in an abandoned bakery in West Berlin. 35 people helped dig the tunnel, most of them were college students, including Joachim who was a civil engineering major. The tunnel was two feet high and three feet wide. It was about a football field long. It took five months to dig. Christa had just recently been let out of prison when the tunnel was completed. Joachim tried desperately to get word to her, but was not sure she was informed. That first night Joachim was overjoyed to find Christa waiting at the other end. She and 56 others made it to freedom. The tunnel took its name from the number of escapees. On the second night suspicious border guards sent two plainclothesmen to check it out and then two guards barged in. One was shot in the chaos (probably accidentally by his comrade). Joachim and Christa got married.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/most-successful-tunnel-escape-history-berlin-wall-180953268/
0 Comments