20 April 1964 · Driving through · Kleinmachnow, Teltow and the Teltow Canal
Concrete lorry to the canal bank, then a swim
Two lorry drivers drove a loaded Škoda truck from a Teltow concrete works through the border fences down to the canal bank and swam across to West Berlin.
On the evening of 20 April 1964 two drivers from VEB Kraftverkehr Brandenburg collected 6.4 tonnes of precast concrete at the VEB Betonwerk in Teltow, a works that lay right on the border. They waited until almost everyone had left, claiming their seat needed repairing.
One of them took a route back from the works' metalwork shop that led directly past the border installations; the Stasi concluded that he must have seen that the guards had left their watchtower to work on signal devices about 80 m away.
At about 20:30 the two drove the loaded Škoda lorry straight at the border: through the works fence, through the triple barbed-wire barrier on the embankment and down the bank, stopping about a metre short of the water. There was no anti-vehicle ditch at that point.
They jumped out and swam across the Teltow Canal, whose middle formed the border. West Berlin police officers pulled them out on the other bank. The guards arrived too late to fire.
Where the accounts differ
The sources do not tell this story the same way. We give each version with its source rather than choose one; the summary and map follow the best-supported version.
How many fences the lorry broke through
- Two: the works fence (wire mesh) and the triple pioneer barrier on the edge of the embankment; the lorry then rolled down the bank and stopped about a metre short of the canal.Stasi-Unterlagen-Archiv (Die DDR im Blick der Stasi) (GDR record)
- Six of seven barbed-wire fences; it got stuck at the last fence, right on the canal bank.Honnefer Volkszeitung, via Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (Zeitungsportal) (press)
Sources
Whose account is this? Drawn from a GDR record and a press report.
GDR records
- Jahrgang 1964: Flucht über den Teltow-KanalStasi-Unterlagen-Archiv (Die DDR im Blick der Stasi)
Press
- Zwei Flüchtlingen gelang Durchbruch mit einem Lastwagen (dpa) (Honnefer Volkszeitung, 1964-04-22, p. 1)Honnefer Volkszeitung, via Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (Zeitungsportal)
Facts checked against the sources: November 2026
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Cite this page
Berlin Experiences, “Concrete lorry to the canal bank, then a swim”, Berlin Wall Escapes, 2026, https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/teltow-concrete-truck-canal-swim-1964/ (accessed [date]).
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