1965
23 events: 11 successful escapes, 3 failed attempts and 9 fatal attempts. At least 16 people reached the West in these events.
January 1965
Through a cut grille between the S-Bahn platforms
A young West Berliner who had fled himself the year before cut a grille beneath the glass wall between the S-Bahn platforms at Friedrichstraße so that his girlfriend could slip through.
4 January 1965
Rope-ladder escape at Ruppiner Straße
Equipped with wire cutters, a rope ladder and a throwing line, a man of about 25 got over the Wall near Ruppiner Straße despite gunfire; stray bullets hit a West Berlin bedroom.
31 January 1965
Kuo Ying-Hu's Mercedes: three people in the boot
A Chinese journalist living in East Berlin, who had permission to drive his Mercedes into West Berlin, tried to take three people from Pankow, born in 1904, 1934 and 1960, out in his boot.
March 1965
A bookshop assistant leaves in the boot of two French officers' car
In March 1965 a 19-year-old East Berlin bookshop assistant asked two French military officers for help; the next evening they drove her to the West in the boot of their car.
3 March 1965
Clothesline rope escape from a Treptow border house
A 26-year-old engineer tied a knotted 50-metre clothesline to a fourth-floor window, lowered himself down, swung over the Wall and dropped into Neukölln.
4 March 1965
Christian Buttkus – a snowstorm escape at Kleinmachnow
After abandoning plans to dive through the Teltow Canal, Christian Buttkus and his fiancée Ilse P. tried to cross at Kleinmachnow in a snowstorm; he was killed at the last fence and she was wounded and jailed.
18 March 1965
An apprentice cuts through three fences at Schönefeld and is shot at the last one
Late at night a car-panel-beater apprentice from Berlin cut through three wire fences on the Schönefeld border. The guards heard him and fired 39 rounds just as he reached the last fence.
April 1965
A West Berliner jailed after an East German fled on his papers, April 1965
In April 1965 an East German used a West Berliner's identity papers to flee to the West; the West Berliner, who had visited relatives in East Berlin that weekend, was jailed there, the AP reported.
7 May 1965
Roofers escape from the Klein Glienicke chapel
Two roofers repairing the chapel roof in the GDR exclave of Klein Glienicke disarmed one of their guards and crossed the Wall with a ladder into Zehlendorf.
9 June 1965 – 11 January 1966
Dieter Brandes – shot at the Nordbahnhof, died months later
Eighteen-year-old Dieter Brandes was shot a few metres from the last barrier at the Nordbahnhof; paralysed, he died in hospital on 11 January 1966.
28 July 1965 – 29 July 1965
The Holzapfel family's cable slide from the Haus der Ministerien
A Leipzig family hid in the East German government's Haus der Ministerien, climbed onto its roof after dark and slid on a steel cable over the Wall into West Berlin.
8 August 1965
Klaus Kratzel killed in the S-Bahn tunnel at Bornholmer Straße
Having returned to East Berlin after a family quarrel, bricklayer Klaus Kratzel tried to get back to his wife and children in the West along the railway at Bornholmer Straße and was apparently struck by a train.
16 August 1965
In the shadow of a tourist bus at Checkpoint Charlie
A young man walked out of the Checkpoint Charlie control area unchecked, keeping to the blind side of a West German coach full of American tourists.
17 August 1965 – 18 August 1965
Klaus Garten – left to bleed in the vehicle ditch
SED member Klaus Garten was shot in the thigh climbing a garden fence at the border in Teltow-Seehof; guards hid him from Western view and took him to a distant Stasi prison hospital, where he died.
27 August 1965 – 28 August 1965
A miner escapes through the Spree at Mühlenstraße
In the night of 27 to 28 August 1965 a 31-year-old miner made his way through ruined buildings in the border strip at Mühlenstraße, entered the Spree and escaped to West Berlin.
19 September 1965
A Teltow schoolgirl behind the dashboard of a Peugeot
A teenage girl from Teltow, whose parents had already fled, was hidden behind the dashboard of a Peugeot by two Americans living in West Berlin. She was found at Checkpoint Charlie.
18 October 1965
Walter Kittel – killed after surrendering at Kleinmachnow
Walter Kittel and a chance acquaintance had already given themselves up when a border troop commander fired 30 shots at him from 15 metres; the shooter later received the longest sentence of any Wall guard.
5 November 1965
Two young conscripts vanish in the fog at Bergmann-Borsig
A two-man patrol of new conscripts from the same home town climbed the fence and the new concrete wall at Wilhelmsruh in thick fog and took their submachine guns with them.
10 November 1965 – 11 November 1965
Heinz Cyrus – hunted into Gartenstraße 85
Chased from the border strip by gunfire, Heinz Cyrus fled into a building on Gartenstraße, climbed out of a fourth-floor window and fell into the courtyard; he died the next morning.
25 November 1965
Heinz Sokolowski – shot at the Wall near the Brandenburg Gate
Former journalist and political prisoner Heinz Sokolowski, 47, had reached the Wall between the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate when a guard shot him in the abdomen.
26 November 1965 – 3 December 1965
Erich Kühn shot 'blindly into the bushes' at Kiefholzstraße
Sixty-two-year-old Erich Kühn was wounded when a guard, ordered to act, fired blindly at a noise on the railway embankment at Kiefholzstraße; he died eight days later.
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.
31 December 1965
Two conscripts flee on New Year's Eve at Gartenstraße
On New Year's Eve 1965 two conscript border soldiers posted at Gartenstraße ran round the S-Bahn entrance, forced their way through barbed-wire and mesh fences and jumped down into West Berlin.
