8 minutes agoA tunnel in which people fled the Communists is also discovered
Periskopi(8 years ago)
(8 years ago)This was a touching moment, it reminded me of the time when as a young man I vowed that I would forever fight against the wall, said Carl-Wolfang Holzapfel, the 73-year-old pensioner who helped build the 80m-long tunnel, three to six meters underground, who was recently found on the [...] road.
When East Germany separated its section of Berlin from the rest in 1961, many families and friends remained divided. Soon thereafter, a man named Gerhard Weinstein gathered a number of young men and together began digging the tunnel near the wall that divided their city.
They wanted to go to the basement of a residence on the other side of the wall. The tunnel should be used to turn Weinstein's new daughter and part of our family and friends around. The cabin and basement were several meters apart, but separate from different political worlds”, said archaeologist Torsten Dresler, who discovered the tunnel.
But their plans, before completion, were broken by East Germany police, the infamous Stasi. They closed the tunnel, filled it with concrete, and arrested 21 persons who participated in the dig or planned to flee through the tunnel. The forgotten tunnel was accidentally occupied by Mauerpark Park parks.
For three decades the length of Berlin has been divided by some 75 tunnels, most of them near Bernauer Street. The nearby residential buildings were an ideal place for digging and entry into tunnels.
Such a flight had shot television NBC in 1962 financed the work of students in western Berlin to connect two cellars from both sides of the wall. Documentary “The Tunnel” shows the departure of 29 men, women and children.
In the autumn of 1964, 57 people fled to the West through a tunnel whose entrance was in an abandoned courtyard. A guard from East Berlin was killed in a shootout between police and those who helped the fugitives go west. Egon Shultz, the 21-year-old who was killed, has become a hero in the east and many have realized that he is trying to escape from danger.
Standing against the wall changed greatly over the years. First, all wanted to remove any memory of it, then conservatives and historians insisted that at least the parts of the wall be preserved”, Dresler says.
The identity of other parts of the wall and tunnels like this is so important that history and people whose lives have influenced this story, not to be forgotten”, adds Dresler, broadcast New York Times. /Periscopi/
