Hidden in a freighter's ballast room from Magdeburg to West Berlin
In 1972 a person got aboard a cargo ship in Magdeburg and was hidden by the crew in the ballast room until the ship reached West Berlin; the ZZF counts it among the escapes known despite the checks at the Nedlitz water crossing.
From 1964 the GDR checked inland shipping to and from West Berlin at a water border crossing at the Bertini-Enge in Potsdam. The channel was blocked by two anchored barges and, from 1974, by pontoons with lowerable chain nets; customs and passport officers searched every cargo ship with sniffer dogs before the nets were pulled out of the channel.
Despite the strict checks, the ZZF's information trail records at least two successful escapes. One was in 1972: a person got aboard a cargo ship in Magdeburg and was hidden by the crew in the ballast room until the ship reached West Berlin.
Sources
- Station 7: Pass- und Zollkontrolle an der Bertini-Enge – Achtung Grenze (archived)Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam (grenze-potsdam.de, via Internet Archive)
Spotted an error, or know more about this story? Email us a correction or addition
Related escapes
5 October 1972
A West Berlin police sergeant with a woman under his back seat
Shortly after midnight a West Berliner tried to drive a mother of four from Oberschöneweide out under the back seat of his car. Only when he was identified did the Stasi realise he was a serving West Berlin police officer.
8 October 1972 – 9 October 1972
Two cars stopped in one night at Heinrich-Heine-Straße
Within three hours GDR controllers at the Heinrich-Heine-Straße crossing stopped two cars. In one was a schoolgirl from Lichtenberg, born in 1956, with four West German helpers; the other carried a lathe operator born in 1949 and a couple from Hamburg.
14 October 1972
A head waiter hidden in a car trailer at Drewitz
Two West German helpers, one a Free University student, tried to bring a head waiter from Friedrichshagen, born in 1927, into West Berlin hidden in a single-axle car trailer. The Stasi says the pair had already smuggled out several people over the transit routes.
29 December 1972
Ellen Thiemann's escape car stopped at the border
The journalist Ellen Thiemann planned to leave the GDR with her eleven-year-old son Carsten in a specially prepared car. On 29 December 1972 she and her husband were arrested and she was later sentenced to three years and five months; after the Wall fell she learned from her Stasi files that her husband had been an informer.