Two men swim the Havel with a patrol boat behind them
In the early hours of 2 September 1988 two men swam across the Havel in the north of Berlin and reached West Berlin unhurt, although a GDR border patrol boat chased them.
In the early morning of Friday 2 September 1988 two men from the GDR swam across the Havel in the north of Berlin. According to the West Berlin police they reached the West Berlin locality of Tegel unhurt.
A patrol boat of the GDR border troops chased them, but no shots were fired from it. The taz noted that the Havel is up to 500 metres wide opposite Tegel.
It was the second time within two weeks that refugees reached West Berlin by swimming: on 21 August four young East Berliners had swum the Spree at the Reichstag.
UPI listed the Havel swim among a series of escapes in the first days of September 1988, which also included two border guards on the 3rd, two canal swimmers on the 4th and two young men over the Wall on the 5th.
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Related escapes
29 September 1988
A man and a woman swim the Havel to Heiligensee in the dark
Before dawn on 29 September 1988 a 34-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman swam about 450 yards across the Havel from near Nieder Neuendorf to Heiligensee, eluding a GDR patrol boat; a passer-by took them to the nearest police station.
21 August 1988
Four swim the Spree by the Reichstag as West Berliners watch
Four East Germans fled through the Spree near the Reichstag in front of many West Berlin onlookers; the crew of the pursuing border patrol boat did not open fire and all four reached the West unhurt.
31 January 1963
Two trainees swim through the ice floes of the Nieder Neuendorfer See
On the night of 31 January 1963 an LEW apprentice and a 20-year-old student on a work placement got through the border fences at Nieder Neuendorf and swam through the ice floes of the lake to Heiligensee in West Berlin.
August 1961
Rita Bergemann and Michael Reck swim the Havel from Sacrow
A good two weeks after the Wall went up, a young Potsdam couple swam roughly 300 metres across the narrowest part of the Havel from Sacrow to Moorlake, just as a patrol boat turned away.
