Today, fifty years ago, the Berlin Wall went up. One of those living in the East and caught was Ulrich Pfeifer, an engineer. Pfeifer escaped in the days that followed by slipping through the Berlin sewer system. He then spent his time and used his gifts to build 4 tunnels to help his fellow East Berliners escape the clutches of communism. His story is recounted in Der Spiegel. An excerpt:
Pfeifer help to build four tunnels under the Wall. It was his way of getting back at the East German dictatorship for jailing his girlfriend.
In the weeks after Aug. 13, 1961, as the Wall was gradually taking shape, Pfeifer had heard of a way to get them both to the West — through the city’s sewage system. In those early days, the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, hadn’t yet managed to plug all the escape routes underground.
It worked for Pfeifer, who managed to flee through the sewers with five others in September. But the group was limited to just six people, so his girlfriend had stayed behind and prepared to join him with another team a few days later. By that time, however, the Stasi had found out about the subterranean route, and the second escape failed. Two people were caught underground. His girlfriend managed to get out and returned home. But she was arrested a few days later, put on trial and sentenced to seven years in jail.
“It was an insane sentence,” Pfeifer recalls. It later got commuted to three years. But he didn’t see her again for 27 years. By then, in 1988, she had married another man and had a family in the East.
In 1961, Pfeifer was 26 and a qualified construction engineer. A West Berliner now, he decided to put his skills to use by joining a group of students digging tunnels to the east.
Three tunnel ventures were betrayed and failed. But one was spectacularly successful. It was completed in September 1962 after three hard months of digging through tough clay soil, and ran for 145 meters from a disused factory on the western side of Bernauer Strasse to the cellar of an apartment building in Schönholzer Strasse 7 in the east.
Pfeifer will never forget lying in the cramped, soaking tunnel, praying that his measurements were correct as he spent desperately tense minutes waiting for the tunnel breakthrough on the eastern side — the riskiest part of the operation. Would they come out in the right building? As they moved the last bricks aside, would they be staring into the gun barrels of waiting Stasi agents?
His surveying had been spot on. It became known as “Tunnel 29” because 29 people, mainly friends and relatives of the 40 diggers, escaped through it.
The coup made worldwide headlines and the Stasi didn’t find the tunnel until 11 days later when the ground caved in on some of it. But the diggers only used it for two days, fearing that it would be quickly discovered and because it was rapidly filling with water from a burst pipe.”
The full story is here.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.