Hans-Peter and Peggy Spitzner in an American's car boot through Checkpoint Charlie

Hans-Peter Spitzner, a teacher from Chemnitz, wanted to follow his wife Ingrid, who had been allowed to travel to Austria for an aunt's birthday. According to Al Jazeera, he had read in a newspaper that US soldiers were not checked when they crossed the border. He drove to East Berlin with his seven-year-old daughter Peggy and told her they were going to see her mother but would have to hide.

All the US soldiers he met on his first two days in Berlin declined to take the risk; helping people escape was forbidden to them. CBS News reports that he asked dozens of GIs. On 18 August 1989 a young American, Eric Yaw, agreed. Father and daughter lay in the boot of a Toyota Camry with US plates and passed Checkpoint Charlie without being checked. Spitzner later said that while a border soldier walked round the car, seconds felt like minutes and minutes like hours. Al Jazeera reports that his only moment of panic came when he felt the car reverse; Yaw was only in the wrong lane.

His wife knew nothing of the escape. He could not reach her by telephone and left a message at her guesthouse: 'Ingrid, don't go back to the GDR.' She received it in time and flew to West Berlin to join them. The Stiftung Sächsische Gedenkstätten calls the two 'the last known Wall refugees'. Their story is told in the documentary 'Der Entschluss', first shown in 2021.