8 October 1972 – 9 October 1972 · Hidden in vehicles
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 16-year-old schoolgirl from Lichtenberg with four West German helpers; the other carried a young lathe operator and a couple from Hamburg.
In autumn 1972 the Stasi reported a series of attempts to take East Germans out through the Berlin crossings in cars. Two of them happened in a single night at the Heinrich-Heine-Straße crossing between Mitte and Kreuzberg.
At about 10 p.m. on 8 October 1972 controllers arrested four West Germans from Waltrop, Dortmund and Castrop-Rauxel, born between 1932 and 1954. They had tried to take a schoolgirl out to West Berlin in an Opel Kadett. She was born in 1956 in Neuhaus, Kreis Hagenow, and was in the tenth grade at the 22nd Polytechnic Secondary School in Berlin-Lichtenberg. The four were held for investigation. The girl was handed back to her parents in East Berlin through the prosecutor's office.
At 0.35 a.m. on 9 October a married couple from Hamburg who had been living in West Berlin-Charlottenburg were arrested at the same crossing. They had hidden a GDR citizen, a lathe operator born in 1949 who had worked at the VEB Gaswerk in Berlin-Lichtenberg, in a hiding place in their car. The couple and the man were all taken into custody.
The Stasi said it was checking whether either group had links to organised escape-help networks.
Sources
- Jahrgang 1972: Versuchte Ausschleusung durch BRD-Bürger (1) – Information Nr. 926/72, 11 October 1972Stasi-Unterlagen-Archiv (DDR im Blick)
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