When [a group of West Berliners who dug a tunnel under the wall] figured out where they had broken through, they sent couriers to East Berlin who raced around the city trying to get hold of everyone who had planned to escape. Some people weren’t home and missed their chance. We got the message the first night, though, and were able to make it to the tunnel by 10:45 p.m. A stranger in the building took us to the door of the courtyard, where he asked my wife to take off her shoes. The courtyard was paved, and her high heels would have made too much noise. Moments later, he came back and said: “Now it’s your turn, you and your son.”
The tunnel was about 150 meters long. We were told to crawl forward; I was terrified that they would shoot me in the back. Finally we reached part of the tunnel that must have been 10 or 12 meters below the surface. The bottom of the tunnel was filled with water, and my son began to cry loudly. Even though he wasn’t a big 3-year-old, he still wasn’t able to stand upright in the tunnel. At the deep end, there was a board attached to a pulley that they used to pull us up with one by one. Suddenly we were in an abandoned bakery in West Berlin.
