The Pankow Cemetery Tunnel

Waltraud Niebank, who lived in East Berlin, married a West Berliner, Lothar Niebank, eight days before the Wall went up. East Berlin authorities had issued her an official permit to move to her husband. When the couple visited her parents in East Berlin on 13 August 1961 to complete the formalities, the permit was torn up in front of them; they were told a state of war now applied and earlier approvals were void.

Lothar Niebank had to return to West Berlin alone. For months his wife petitioned the German Red Cross, the GDR foreign ministry, head of state Walter Ulbricht and the Soviet embassy, all without success. Her husband eventually made contact with escape helpers in West Berlin.

In December 1961 an uncle passed on a message telling the 24-year-old to go to the Pankow cemetery carrying grave decorations. Shortly before Christmas she escaped together with a couple she was friends with: through a hidden entrance behind a gravestone they went through a tunnel of roughly 30 metres, barely a metre high and lined with boards, into the West Berlin locality of Schönholz.

A few days later GDR border police discovered the tunnel and kept it under watch. Two women who tried to use it on 29 December 1961 were arrested and each sentenced to two years and three months in prison for a 'passport offence'. The escape remained a trauma for Waltraud Niebank, who only spoke about it after the end of the GDR.