August 1961 · Over the wall · Treptow and Neukölln
A hairdresser cuts the wire at the Kiefholzstraße allotments for his daughter
When the border closed, a hairdresser who had fled in 1958 cut the new wire at his allotment so that his married daughter could crawl across, and then kept cutting holes for others.
Monika Schönicke's parents ran a hairdresser's shop in Prenzlauer Berg, and the family spent summers in a garden house on the Kiefholzstraße in Treptow. Her father left for West Berlin in 1958, opened a salon there and took a garden plot on the western side of the same colony, only about 200 metres from the family's eastern plot.
On 13 August 1961 Monika and her parents were in the western garden house, while her older, married sister was on the eastern side and could not get through the roll of barbed wire. Her father fetched a cutter from the garden, waited until the People's Police had moved on and cut the wire so that her sister could come across.
Encouraged, he cut the fence again three plots further along. Whenever the police came close, the people waiting pulled the wire together; others handed the guards chocolate, cigarettes or schnapps, and the guards walked on without checking the roll. When they had gone, people came out of the gardens and slipped through. Monika Schönicke recalled at least ten such holes along the Kiefholzstraße. The family later went through the Marienfelde reception camp.
Sources
- Flucht durch Schrebergärten – rbb eyewitness video (2011)rbb – Geschichte der Berliner Mauer (berlin-mauer.de)
- Flucht durch Schrebergärten – subtitles of the rbb eyewitness videorbb – Geschichte der Berliner Mauer (berlin-mauer.de)
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