5 October 1972 · Hidden in vehicles

A West Berlin police sergeant with a woman under his back seat

Shortly after midnight a West Berliner tried to drive a mother of four from Oberschöneweide out under the back seat of his car. Only when he was identified did the Stasi realise he was a serving West Berlin police officer.

Black-and-white panorama of cars lined up in marked lanes at a checkpoint, with uniformed guards leaning into car windows and a block of flats at right.
GDR border guards checking West Berlin cars in the lanes of the Sonnenallee crossing, 4 January 1964 Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-C0104-0010-001 / Stöhr. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 de

At about 0.15 a.m. on 5 October 1972 GDR controllers at the Sonnenallee crossing arrested a West Berliner, born in 1928. Under the back seat of his car, registration B-RE 62, was a woman from Berlin-Oberschöneweide, born in 1936, married and the mother of four children, whom he was trying to bring to West Berlin.

When he was identified, it emerged that he was an Oberwachtmeister of the West Berlin police, serving at station 23 of the Tiergarten police directorate. The Stasi opened an investigation. The case was one of several failed smuggling attempts at the Berlin crossings in October 1972, soon after the transit and travel agreements had increased traffic.

Sources

  1. Jahrgang 1972: Verhinderte Ausschleusung einer DDR-Bürgerin nach Westberlin – Information Nr. 914/72, 5 October 1972Stasi-Unterlagen-Archiv (DDR im Blick)

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