Notes

How has escaping east Germany affect your life and how did it help you achieve success?
"If I would have stayed in East Germany, my first 45 years of life would have been pretty bad. I made a decision to come to America and went with a suitcase and the American dream, to become who I want to be."
Why would you risk your life to get out of East Berlin?
"I was just a five or six year old boy so I didn't know how bad it was. My parents had just decided to get us out of East Germany so I had to kind of move along with them."
What happened that night?
"It was just 3 people, my mom, my sister, and me. We got dropped off in a forest by a friend and my mother knew the general direction. So we started walking and walking for about 3 or 4 hours and then we got caught by border guards and were taken in to a large farm. They questioned my mom about what we were doing and that took about an hour. After that they let us go and told us that we had to go home. So we started walking to our home and once we were far away my mom decided to try again so this time we went on a different trail. And we started again heading toward West Germany. We were walking along and all of a sudden, we see some young men come running down the hill and it was during the night so we were scared. When they came running down the hill they would yell and holler and made a lot of noise and we didn't know who they were. They stopped and one of them came to us and he said that we shouldn't be afraid because they help people across the boarder. And they acted that way because then the guards would think that they were a bunch of drunk guys. The guy told us in detail how we should go and what to watch out for because once we get close to the actual boarder there are a lot more of guards with dogs that could smell really well. My mother was very thankful and we started out again in the right direction. When we got to the boarder my mother stood still and we looked around and once we realized where the guards were at a specific moment we decided to dash across the boarder. After that we were across the boarder."
How did you get through the wall?
"In our area there was no wall. Maybe some fences, guards, and some barbed wire. 1948-1949. We found a rhythm in the guards movement and when no-one was looking we dashed through."
What did you bring with you and why?
"I might have had a little backpack with some necessities like clothes. We had to take as little as possible because then people might know that we left."
What about your friends? Did you tell them? Did some of them leave already?
"The only person that knew was the person that drove us to the boarder. We heard of some people trying to leave, some made it, some didn't."
How did you feel when you were escaping? Were you scared?
"There were definitely moments when we were scared but other times you just walk along and wonder what will happen next."
How did you overcome your fear of going out in the night and trying your luck with the wall?
"Just hanging onto my mother and hope all will go well. As a little boy you don't really understand the depth of leaving and your possible consequences."