Tunnel 57

From April 1964, over half a year, a group of mostly Free University students led by escape helper Wolfgang Fuchs dug a tunnel from a disused bakery at Bernauer Straße 97 in West Berlin. At a depth of about 11–12 metres it ran 145 metres under the Wall. Among the helpers was physics student Reinhard Furrer, who later became an astronaut. More than a hundred East Berliners were meant to escape through it.

Instead of reaching a cellar, the tunnel came up in a disused outside toilet in the courtyard of Strelitzer Straße 55. On the nights of 3 and 4 October 1964, 57 people – men, women, teenagers and children – were led through it into the West.

But the plan had been betrayed. Shortly after midnight on the second night, two Stasi men posing as refugees encountered the helpers, left on a pretext and returned with border soldiers. Escape helper Christian Zobel fired first, wounding 21-year-old sergeant Egon Schultz. The fatal shots, however, came from the Kalashnikov of a fellow border soldier firing into the dark courtyard. The helpers escaped back through the tunnel; Schultz died on the way to hospital.

The GDR made Schultz a socialist hero and blamed the 'West Berlin agents' for his murder, hiding the autopsy findings. Only after 1990 did records show that the fatal bullets came from a GDR soldier. In the West, the helpers lost public sympathy at the time.