Michael Schwerk pulls the S-Bahn emergency brake
In November 1966 Michael Schwerk, a conscript in the Bereitschaftspolizei, stopped an S-Bahn train near the border by pulling the emergency brake and fled across the tracks, a disused railway shaft 4.80 m deep and two barbed-wire fences into West Berlin.
Michael Schwerk, born in 1943 in Waldenburg in Silesia, grew up in Pirna in Saxony. After his Abitur he was refused the studies he hoped for and had to train as a concrete worker. After the Wall was built he decided to leave the GDR, and while doing his military service with the Bereitschaftspolizei in Wandlitz near Berlin he planned an escape across the inner-city border.
In November 1966, then 22, he stopped a Berlin S-Bahn train at a point close to the border by pulling the emergency brake and fled across the tracks. The amateur gymnast had to get past a disused railway shaft 4.80 metres deep and two barbed-wire fences before he reached West Berlin.
Sources
- DDR-Zeitzeuge Michael SchwerkDDR-Zeitzeuge (Koordinierendes Zeitzeugenbüro, Gedenkstätte Berlin-Hohenschönhausen)
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