Hidden in vehicles
Hidden compartments in cars and lorries, driven through the checkpoints by escape helpers.
Related methods: false papers and disguises, guards who fled
1964 – November 1967
The Cadillac with a dashboard hideout
Escape helper Burkhart Veigel used a Cadillac DeVille with a hiding place behind the dashboard to smuggle refugees out of the GDR for about three years without being caught.
23 May 1964
Smuggled out in a BMW Isetta
Klaus-Günter Jacobi hid his friend Manfred in a modified BMW Isetta, the smallest car ever used for an escape, and drove him under the barrier to the West.
9 September 1964
Fifteen people behind the pig carcasses
A trusted meat-transport driver took his wife, their eight children and his brother-in-law's family of five through the Heinrich-Heine-Straße checkpoint hidden among pig carcasses.
11 December 1964
Hidden in the airport bus's spare-wheel box
The driver of the Interflug shuttle bus to West Berlin simply did not come back one morning; his girlfriend rode with him through the Invalidenstraße checkpoint inside the spare-wheel box.
26 December 1965
Heinz Schöneberger – escape helper shot at Heinrich-Heine-Straße
Two West German brothers tried to smuggle two East Berlin women out in a Ford Taunus; when one hiding place was discovered, Heinz Schöneberger tried to force the barrier and was shot just before reaching the West.
7 July 1969
The 'Trojan cow' at Drewitz
A 28-year-old woman from Karl-Marx-Stadt was hidden inside a hollow model bull in a wooden crate, but the hiding place was found at the Drewitz crossing.
22 January 1973
15-month-old Holger H. suffocates during his parents' escape
A young couple hid with their baby son in crates on a West Berlin acquaintance's truck. They passed the Drewitz checkpoint undetected, but when the crates were opened in the West, 15-month-old Holger was no longer breathing.
4 March 1975
Escape helper Hartmut Richter caught at Drewitz with his sister in the boot
After smuggling 33 people out in the boot of his car, escape helper Hartmut Richter was stopped at the Drewitz crossing with his own sister and her fiancé hidden inside, and sentenced to 15 years.