https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/Od4dL9Lip2/tunnel_29
Story is put together in a great easy to keep your place format - including separate section linked tabs at top
In 1961, Joachim Rudolph escaped from one of the world's most brutal dictatorships. A few months later, he began tunnelling his way back in. Why?
Quote from: "cc"
Story is put together in a great easy to keep your place format
In 1961, Joachim Rudolph escaped from one of the world's most brutal dictatorships. A few months later, he began tunnelling his way back in. Why?
[size=130]The Tunnel [/size]
It all began with a knock at the door. Joachim, a 22-year-old engineering student, was in his room at university in West Berlin. He had been studying there for a few months, spending his free time taking photographs, or going to jazz nights.
At his door were two Italian students he knew in passing who had come to ask for his help. They needed to get some friends out of East Berlin and they wanted to do this by digging a tunnel.
This was October 1961, just two months after the Berlin Wall had gone up. It was built by the East German government to stop the flood of people leaving the communist dictatorship for a better life in the West. But what was so extraordinary about it was the speed with which it had been built.
Tens of thousands of East German soldiers had gone into the streets of East Berlin in the dead of night, stringing barbed wire from posts and making concrete barricades. By the next morning, this barrier cut through the whole city, snaking through parks, playgrounds, cemeteries and squares.
Although the wall had been hastily put together (and wasn't as tall or as heavily guarded as it would later become) it changed the city overnight.
When people woke up on 13 August 1961, they suddenly found themselves on one side of it. Wives were cut off from their husbands, brothers from their sisters. There were even stories of newborn babies in the West now separated from their mothers.
...........................................................................
He tunnelled back in?
Yes- I have not got that far so do not get that part of it - I would assume to help others get to West Berlin
it is a long story = extremely well put together
Quote from: "cc"
it is a long story = extremely well put together
I have no doubt it's a fascinating story.
Quote from: "cc"
Story is put together in a great easy to keep your place format - including separate section links at top
In 1961, Joachim Rudolph escaped from one of the world's most brutal dictatorships. A few months later, he began tunnelling his way back in. Why?
Very interesting cc.
Quote from: "cc"
Story is put together in a great easy to keep your place format - including separate section links at top
In 1961, Joachim Rudolph escaped from one of the world's most brutal dictatorships. A few months later, he began tunnelling his way back in. Why?
Make a good movie.
I've read about Joachim Rudolph.
Quote from: "Herman"
Make a good movie.
It did
The Tunnel (1962)
1h 30min | Documentary | TV Movie 10 December 1962
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2221494/?ref_=nm_flmg_slf_1
Quote from: "cc"
Quote from: "Herman"
Make a good movie.
It did
The Tunnel (1962)
1h 30min | Documentary | TV Movie 10 December 1962
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2221494/?ref_=nm_flmg_slf_1
:thumbup:
Basically same people - Tunnel 57, 3 years later was a tunnel under the Berlin Wall that on the third and fourth October 1964 was the location of a mass escape by 57 East Berlin citizens.
Quote from: "cc"
Weren't East German border guards ordered to shoot to kill?
Yes. Shoot on sight. But they can only shoot what they know is there
There was an incident in this where one tunneler shot a Stasi in shoulder when they were found out and another Stasi lost it and killed his comrade (friendly fire) ... they got away - must have gone like hell through tunnel? I forget the point in time but it must have been the end of Tunnel 57 as Staci had found the entrance on the East side .. can't find it now
The soldier was included on the ceremonial plaque for Tunnel 57 in West Berlin
Quote from: "cc"
There was an incident in this where one tunneler shot a Stasi in shoulder when they were found out and another Stasi lost it and killed him (friendly fire) ... they got away - must have gone like hell through tunnel? I forget the point in time but it must have been the end of Tunnel 75 .. can't find it now
The soldier was included on the ceremonial plaque for Tunnel 57 in West Berlin
It must have been a horrible place to live if people would risk certain death if detected.....much like North Korea.
Control was total ,, Stasi was vicious and efficient ... spying on everyone and enforcement also - East Berliners lived a 1984
Quote from: "cc"
I thought it was 1989.
Yes, liberation was
I'm referring to the book / movie 1984 where govt control was total .. East Berliners lived it
Great part of history. My paternal grandparents are from Germany.
Quote from: "cc"
I'm referring to the book / movie 1984 where govt control was total .. East Berliners lived it
Ah, I see cc.
Quote from: "Fashionista"
Quote from: "cc"
I'm referring to the book / movie 1984 where govt control was total .. East Berliners lived it
Ah, I see cc.
The book we were suppose to of read this year Fash :laugh:
I did finally see the movie though.
Quote from: "Blazor"
Quote from: "Fashionista"
Quote from: "cc"
I'm referring to the book / movie 1984 where govt control was total .. East Berliners lived it
Ah, I see cc.
The book we were suppose to of read this year Fash :laugh:
I did finally see the movie though.
Maybe she did.
Quote from: "Blazor"
Quote from: "Fashionista"
Quote from: "cc"
I'm referring to the book / movie 1984 where govt control was total .. East Berliners lived it
Ah, I see cc.
The book we were suppose to of read this year Fash :laugh:
I did finally see the movie though.
I remember Fash saying she wants to read 1984.
Quote from: "Gaon"
Quote from: "Blazor"
Quote from: "Fashionista"
Quote from: "cc"
I'm referring to the book / movie 1984 where govt control was total .. East Berliners lived it
Ah, I see cc.
The book we were suppose to of read this year Fash :laugh:
I did finally see the movie though.
Maybe she did.
Not yet.
The momentous event many believed their lifetimes would never see occurred 30 years ago Saturday when the Berlin Wall came crashing down in a flurry of pickaxes, bulldozers and political uncertainty.
The fact I was there was more to do with luck than it was wise planning, for no one would have predicted what would happen that night.
I was the Sun's European bureau chief at the time, based out of London, and was actually in Poland finishing up an interview with the Solidarity movement's founder's Lech Walesa when a phone call from head office in Toronto sent me to Berlin.
It was the Sun's editor-in-chief, Les Pyette, now retired but a bonafide legend in the newspaper game, who said another politburo change among the Soviet Union's hierarchy in East Germany might be worth a look.
It was a time in the media's evolution that newspapers were virtually a licence to print money because the Internet, which would later rain hell on newspapers and see thousands of journalists unemployed to cut costs, had yet to be sophisticated.
Print was king back then, and expense money no object.
Within hours, therefore, I found myself sitting in the press theatre in East Berlin with scores of others, waiting for Gunter Schabowski to show up to say whatever he was going to say, for no one knew.
Today, there is a largish number of North American journalists who claim they were there, much like Woodstock, not for the aftermath of the Wall coming down but actually in that small press theatre waiting for Schabowski to effectively change the course of history.
But, truth be known, there were only a handful, in particular a freelancer named Philip Winslow, a friend who somehow snagged an office in the Reichstag, and former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, who would use the time of day and a television hookup to break the news to the world.
He and I spoke for almost an hour amongst ourselves because what his interpreter heard was somewhat different than what my interpreter heard, and this was no time or occasion to make even the slightest mistake.
Not only was the Wall coming down, but the Cold War that it symbolized and the Soviet Union that had it go up almost overnight in 1961 as demanded by Kremlin hardliner Nikita Khrushchev were on a collision course to their end.
As East German snipers stood motionless in their watchtowers that night, there was chaos below as joyous Berliners bravely climbed the Wall armed with pickaxes and adrenalin and began to tear it down.
The first "official" opening occurred the following morning when an East German bulldozer broke through a path for pedestrians who, once in West Berlin, saw for the first time the wealth on exhibit by scores of well-lit shops selling the fresh fruit and vegetables unimaginable to them.
A drive through East Berlin was like night compared to West Berlin's day. Buildings and alleyways were still pockmarked by bullets fired in the Second World War and the city looked as if frozen to the darkness of the mid-1940s.
Before flying back to England, I went to the Commonwealth War Cemetery in West Berlin and found the grave of Pilot Officer Daniel Bonokoski who, at the age of 23, was shot out of the sky over Berlin while on a mission with the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command where the odds of dying were a 50-50 coin toss.
He was my father's cousin and best friend but my father, Matt, who also flew in Bomber Command, somehow won the coin flip and made it home.
He attributed it to blind luck.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/bonokoski-remembering-the-death-of-the-berlin-wall-icon-of-the-cold-war