4 September 1963 · Guards who fled
Jürgen Cr. jumps from the new wall
While guarding engineers who were building a second concrete wall at Bernauer Straße, conscript Jürgen Cr. waited for his partner to go for cigarettes and jumped over the front wall into West Berlin.
On 4 September 1963 the barrier wall at Bernauer Straße 17–22 was being reinforced with a second wall made of concrete slabs. Gefreiter Jürgen Cr., a conscript who had been transferred to the Wall from the Bereitschaftspolizei in Zwickau, was one of six border soldiers guarding the engineers at the site.
Cr. had positioned himself with a second guard on top of the new wall. When his partner went off to fetch cigarettes, Cr. jumped over the front wall into the West and disappeared into a doorway on the opposite side of the street.
A border troops photograph of the escape spot is held in the Federal Military Archive and is shown at the Berlin Wall Memorial.
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