| on 27-06-2007 07:02
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Published in : , Politics |
 By Calvin Keogh Not every town is famous for a wall. Usually it’s of the medieval kind, designed to keep people out. Berlin’s 3.6m-high, 155km-long barbed wire and reinforced concrete ‘Anti-Fascist Protection Wall’, raised overnight by the Communists and guarded night and day for 28 years, was put up to keep people in.
At first they jumped from windows or simply ran for it. Later, they rammed checkpoints but the authorities adapted with each attempt and made escape increasingly challenging, and inventive. Horst Breistoffer removed the battery of the tiny Italian Isetta and smuggled people out before being caught on his tenth run.
Under and overground routes were tried. A hundred fugitives made it through the tunnel Wolfgang Fuchs dug from his bathroom to a Westside basement. For the Strelzyk and Wetzel families the sky was the limit as they blew their way to freedom in a 75ft-high balloon stitched together from scraps of fabric.
These and other stories are told at the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, the legendary crossing point between US and Soviet sectors. Founded by Rainer Hildebrandt in 1962, the center documents the hair-raising attempts to get out. Here you can learn how to clear a wall in a mini-sub or a homemade aircraft.
The privately-run museum is Berlin’s top sight and can be overrun by coach-loads and school groups with their somewhat theme-park view of history. For a more sobering experience you might go to Bernauer Strasse, where Hildebrandt first took visitors to a 2½-room apartment overlooking the Wall.
Here the Berlin Wall Memorial preserves a short stretch of two curtain walls separated by the death strip. The documentation center opposite features changing exhibitions in both English and German and an observation deck at the height of one of the 302 watchtowers that once stood guard.
Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, Friedrichstrasse 43-45 (9am-10pm daily, entry €9).
Dokumentationszentrum, Bernauer Strasse 111 (10am-6pm, closed Mon, free entry).
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