September 1961 · Over the wall · Staaken
Sent to help build the Wall, Albrecht Roos crawls under the fence from Falkensee to Spandau
Sent by the Kalinin engineering school for agricultural technology to help build the Wall, Albrecht Roos used a meal break, said he felt sick and crawled under the barbed wire through a ditch, crossing from Falkensee into Spandau in September 1961.
Albrecht Roos was supposed to help build the Wall for the engineering school for agricultural technology 'M. I. Kalinin'. During a break, when the guards were also eating, he said he had to go back into the woods because he felt sick. The fence was secured with barbed wire at the top and bottom, but at one spot a ditch ran underneath it. Roos got caught in the barbed wire and crawled through to the other side bleeding, his clothes torn. He had crossed the border from Falkensee to Spandau.
On the western side he ran into two policemen (the article calls them West German) and was taken by car to the Marienfelde reception camp, where he lived for 14 days before moving to his sister in Offenbach. On 25 September 1961 his father Karl Roos received a letter from the engineering school about a 'not exactly pleasant matter'; according to the article, Roos had crossed the border ten days before.
Sources
- Von Matthias Jekosch: Weihnachten im WestenPotsdamer Neueste Nachrichten / Der Tagesspiegel (14 Dec 2010)
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