Today we will tell stories of people escaping East Germany into the West. There are lots of tunnels, jumping out of windows, a terrifying homemade hot air balloon, lots of hang gliders, and even a trapeze artist! Imagine a wall being built in your city over night and tomorrow you can't see your family, get to your job, or go to your doctor, and then that wall stays up for almost 30 years. It's wild, and in the span of history - it just happened.
Today we will tell stories of people escaping East Germany into the West. There are lots of tunnels, jumping out of windows, a terrifying homemade hot air balloon, lots of hang gliders, and even a trapeze artist!
Imagine a wall being built in your city over night and tomorrow you can't see your family, get to your job, or go to your doctor, and then that wall stays up for almost 30 years. It's wild, and in the span of history - it just happened.
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
hi listeners the fars here before we start today's episode you'll notice that Taylor and I are talking about a
previous episode that we're going to release uh on Monday February 5th that
topic was a revisit of the Almo conversation that ultimately segwayed
into a broader conversation about politics and belief systems and
everything else we decid after recording and Rel listening to it that if we want
to have a Nuance conversation about those topics then we can have that in a more structured way and it would make a
lot more sense to The Listener and so we decided that this week we're going to kill that episode we're just going to
have Taylor's episode this week and with that being said we're going to go ahead
and start the intro and start the Berlin Wall conversation a matter of the people of State of California versus orthal
James Simpson case number ba09 and so my fellow Americans ask not what your country can
do for you ask what you can do for your [Music]
country and we are back from an exciting episode on Monday which I'm
sure half of you all totally well probably 80% of you all hated
we're back regardless we're trying our best look we're trying to be human which Being Human means we have like weird
moments and you know maybe we just had one I don't know I don't know I guess we'll learn from you guys um but yeah
thanks for joining back Taylor um we're doing a fail we're going to discuss different topics it's going to be wild
it's G be cookie it's be crazy uh that's my new intro so Taylor I think today is
going to be your episode I've been sipping on a little glass of wine this
whole time yeah like which is so like seems
contradictory to everything I learned in high school but like just find it so easy to drink it's that weird so I the
first time I ever got drunk was on tequila and I Ved and I didn't drink
tequila again for until I was probably 30 proba till 30 yeah that's fair um I
couldn't the taste just reminded me of being sick and I couldn't did but now I I think tequil is one of the cleaner
things to drink like he just feels very clean and yeah nice and yeah so Pro cool
cool cool cool um so I promised that I was going to talk
about Germany again today because I am I to talking about America so let's talk about Germany and what are their
immigration policies this is an immigration story so I'm gladly brought this up um so I was thinking about it
because of the Alamo thinking about borders and border crossings um and let's talk about the Berlin wall and
some of the great escapes from East Germany that is awesome do you know I've been to
Berlin cool I have too I love Berlin it's one of the coolest cities in yeah
it is it is so fun the the start contrast between East and West is
remarkable wild yeah yeah it's wild so let's talk a little bit about that um I did want to at first I wanted to talk
about Checkpoint Charlie have you been to the check Point Charlie Museum yep um I wanted to talk about that but then
like I found some other stories that I wanted to talk about too so now it's just about like daring Crossings of into
into West Berlin from East Berlin love it is day um
so here's the dish on the Berlin Wall which I'm sure you've heard of but it was up from 1961 to 1989 and it ALS it
also all was blows my mind when I think about how Berlin is like an island in the middle of East Germany you know how
so it's it's not like on a border it's in the middle of East Germany but
there's a wall around it you know so it's like yeah like Austin if Austin
were like a if three quarters of Austin belonged somewhere else you know you
have to like fly into it take a train into it it's not like right next to the
border between East and West so it's sort of it's it's up in the middle of East Germany um and it's great um so
it's after World War II it's 1949 Germany is divided um into two countries
between the Allies so remember the Soviet Union was an ally during World War II and um so they got East Germany
which was the German Democratic Republic the gdr and that was controlled by the Soviet Union West Germany was a feder
federal republic of Germany the F FRG controlled by the United States Great Britain and France is technically an
occupation so they were like cleaning things up putting people on trial doing all these afterw War things but
technically East Germany was um going to be Soviet Union is going to be in charge
e Germany they're going to be Soviet think sense so in the 50s um the Allies
started to head out the occupation ended and Germans started to flee to the West in droves because in East Germany like
you were saying like you know it was a very um it was like a Soviet block the technology was not keeping up like it
was a very sad place to live people wanted to leave and people started to leave for better Freedom better e
Economic Opportunity and they started to go to the West um and they were like we have to do something to stop this stop
this from happening Soviets were yes they're like we don't want anyone we don't want we
can't have everybody leaving you know we need to stop them from leaving and one of the places that they could do that
like very physically was in Berlin because Berlin was just like a weirdly divided City in the middle of East Germany so crazy
and so they could so the border between East and West Germany like all throughout
Germany was guarded you know by guards and there was like you know fences and
Barb Wire and guard towers and all those things but in Berlin specifically they literally build a wall around you know
3ar of Berlin and that was the west and the rest of it was was the East so they
started to build the wall on August 13th 1961 and
wait when did they take control of the territory like how many years between they owned it a while so it was
1949 When The War like officially was like ended and then that part of it went to
the Soviet Union the rest it bunch of the Allies or the other the other allies so were that 12 years without a wall
yeah 12 years without a wall and people could like go back and forth you could have like you would have family that lived on the other side of Germany or of
Berlin you could just like you know use your pass it was like a different country so you'd have to like you know
go in and whatever but you could it wasn't like forbidden you know so um a
man named Walter UL led the construction of the Berlin Wall um on June 15th 1961
so two months before the wall started building he had a national press conference where he said no one has the
intention to erect a wall and that was the first time anyone had even heard the word wall and then he built one two months later
which is hilarious um so the first thing that happened was barbed wire and like
more a lot more guards than than before and it happened like literally in the
middle of the night like in the middle of the night the East German soldiers went and started to build this place
like build these build these walls they're first made out just like fences and barbed wire but it was like you
would wake up one morning and you couldn't go see your mom for 30 years
you know she lived on the other side of the wall you couldn't go see her um I read a book in I have some like stories
that are like anecdotal but about like a city like totally cut in half like maybe
one day you can't you can't go to work like you can't see your family like you're just like totally separated from people on the other side of the city um
I read a a book when I was um in high school in German I think it's very I I
read it I tried my best but uh it's called I'm Kristen Anda Dar and la and it's the I'm the short end of the sunny
street because sometime some streets were cut in half like your neighbor would be in West Berlin and you were in
East Berlin and like your life changed dramatically based on where they put that wall eventually they would like
demolish buildings and like to actually build the wall and the space between so it was like wall an a area called The
Dead Zone that you would like have to you could like technically run across if you're trying to run across it and then a fence and then the guard Tower so it
was like a kind of like a moat but dry you know like all around um they had to knock down buildings to do that that
that was um when I was in Germany that was the weirdest part about that experience was if you're ever in Berlin
and you look on the ground every now and then you'll see like these checks on the ground like these bricks and c and it
takes it took me a while to realize that that was where the burlin wall was and
when you see you're like how like yeah like one like one bisects like a fire
hydrant and then goes into the side of a building like like what the [ __ ] like it's so
weird and there's some people who like got out of East Berlin by climbing out their back window you know like the wall
was right there yeah so they were like they would like the wall was like through their house technically you know
like the invisible wall like through their house so they would climb up their back window CU they couldn't go up there front and then they could like run and
be be in West Berlin we to leave everything you have to like leave you know like no one moved to West berin
they like ran there you know so crazy um JFK sent lynon Johnson to try to calm
people down I don't know how calming he was he doesn't feel very calming but like Lyndon Johnson came was like
everybody calm down everything's G be fine um some like key dates just for the Berlin Wall in general in
1963 Kennedy came um so it's two years after the wall is is built um this when he made his famous speech said if been
I'm Berliner which means I am a donut um you would say ber without is that really
it means like in Berliner is like a pastry but like B you say I'm a you say
in German you don't say I'm and you say I am English you know what I mean like
it's I don't know I think so I think it's true um it's cute but the point was
like you know this is we you can have a wall around a city you know um and
in from 1969 to 1971 the chancellor tried to improve relations but um it
ended in an agreement called the four power agreement um so that the Allies were able to like keep Berlin at all
which I think is just obviously also just again crazy because it's in the middle of East Germany just like sits
there and is like different which is wild um in 1987 Ronald Reagan did his
famous tear down this wall speech in Berlin um and the wall fell in
1989 um it fell on November 9th 1989 for some reason David hassle yes singing of
he was wearing a piano coat I remember I just what unbelievable and I mean it was
so when I was in Berlin taking a tour they telling about 2000 I was um then I
went again like yeah yeah I think that's last time I was in Germany No I drove through whatever but I was in Berlin in 2000 and I mean how [ __ ] fun were
that they have been you get to run across the wall and like see people you've never you haven't seen in 30 years you know like you get to like do
all these things that you weren't allowed to do and even like coming from East ber to Westland like seeing their technology and the buildings you know
and being like Oh my God like that all this stuff is happening over here and um the when I was ad on tour they said that
like they just announced it like on the news they were like by the way the wall is now open and everybody was
like what and then they like ran outside you know people just like screaming and like crying like losing their minds cuz
they wanted to like be together um and in 1990 Germany was unified on October 3rd so that's when it stopped having an
East of West Germany um so was sorry sorry can you repeat this part like so was was Berlin
like so it was just Berlin no it wasn't just Berlin right no the countes divided
in like EAS but East Germany is smaller but in the middle of East Germany is Berlin and
so so Berlin was so it cut across all of Germany and also Berlin the wall yeah
the wall was like just in Berlin there were borders everywhere you have like like a border
crossing with like a fence but like the actual wall was like just in Berlin because they had to divide an actual like living City in
half crazy okay you know like like you said like if like one day they were like oh you can't go to like this part of the
city there's a wall there you know you just like so that that that's why when I
went to Checkpoint Charlie um that's one of the facto I Learned was I mean it was
lit like like your mom is on the other side of this like I
forgot what it was like 18 foot thick wall like your mom was like right there but you can like and people would try to
make their escapes and yeah and it's like I I've seen this in a couple movies
where it's like you know you wake up and you're like my girlfriend's over there you know and you're like what like I can't go to school I can't go to my job
I can't it's on the other side it it reminds of what we just talked about right like
of humans are always going to try to persevere for what's better for them
and to think that like you're like man it is right there like yeah right there like I just have to get over this thing
and it's right that's GNA be that's G to be crazy think about like I went there yesterday
and now I can't go for 30 years like that's crazy yeah did you buy a chunk of
uh the wall I did not no I did see at um
elanar Roosevelt's at Hyde Park in in in New York when I went they have a like a
part of the Berlin Wall there like a statue like is about like unification and people and all those things and they
part of it there but it's beautiful because on the east side you couldn't get near it because it was like guard
points bar wire fence Dead Zone wall but on the West Side you could touch it so
it has a lot of like the beautiful graffiti and paint and paintings and all those things because on the west side it
was just there the east side was where it was like mostly dangerous yeah I remember seeing it because they have the
better artwork there's a lot of shitty artwork on Pearland wall they have some like really nice artwork and that
section is like HED off and people can look at it there's parts of it that's like still up but you can see it right
like you were saying and then on the ground there's that there's that like brass line on the ground right shows you
where it was yeah um so let's talk about Checkpoint Charlie for a little bit so
it's a cold war obviously the city is divided and Checkpoint Charlie is the main checkpoint for like diplomats and
Americans and um you know Britain British and French who were going through um there's a big sign there that
says you are leaving the American sector cuz it's like a little like island of like the diplomacy where we could walk
through um it's just called Checkpoint Charlie because alpha bravo charlie it's C it's like the third oh oh oh okay
that's why um and a lot of like you a lot of the
Allied Forces couldn't use any other checkpoint they could only use Checkpoint Charlie so it's one of the most used um it's on the corner of fried
stasa Zimmer stasa and ma stasa um Ma stasa just coincidentally means Wall
Street um and then they build the wall but like because like you know how Wall Street in
New York is because that's where the wall used to be wait what wall like
there was a wall around New York to like protect them from like Invaders and like native people and other people who would
like want to come back in the seriously that's why Wall Street yeah New York had a wall in the in the lower to protect
like the batteries where you could like the Battery Park is called the battery because that's where you had like your cannons and then the wall protected the
rest of it can you do an episode on this
sure is that be oh wow okay all right cool um and so yeah so that's where
Checkpoint Charlie is so just some fun some fun crazy stories of people whether
at Checkpoint Charlie or not um you know jumping jumping over to West to West
Berlin so on August 15th 1961 this is two days
after the wall started being built um an East German soldier named Conrad Schuman was guarding the fence um him and his un
unit arrived at 4:30 in the morning so he'd been there all day like all night
um they didn't really know what to do and they were kids he was 19 you know he's like this kid and his Superior
officers are like you stand here and you guard this fence against enemies of socialism you know like they we don't
know what to do like they had guns they don't know like should I shoot someone I'm like what do I do so the it's starting to they have it's just the
fence in the barb wire at this point and he started to be like like did you ever see that um what is it the Mitchell and
web look where they go are we the baddies have you ever seen that one it's like the what it's a sketch show called
The Mitchell and web look it's a sketch show from the UK so funny there's one where they are Nazi soldiers like in a
Dugout and they're like hey did you notice that like our hats have skulls on
them and they're like yeah like are we are we are we the baddies it's so funny but like that this this guy starts to be
like I'm on the wrong side cuz people from the west west blin are yelling at him you know he's just doing his job
standing at this thing um he saw a woman hand flowers over the fence to her mother because it was his her her
mother's birthday and she looked at him and she was like Mom I'd come over but these guys won't let me you know it's like just the very beginning of this and
so around noon a crowd of West Germans tried to move in and they had to like push them back and Conrad starts to get
really scared so he sees this part of the um of the barb wire that he can push
down when nobody's looking so he starts to push it lower and lower and someone from the West German side goes to talk
to him and he yells get back really loud and he goes I'm gonna jump and he whispers it to the guy so the guy on the
west German side goes and gets a West German military van to get him and
Conrad jumped and that's the famous picture of the soldier jumping over the barbwire have you seen that picture uh
no but I'm about to Conrad Schuman s c hu M Ann jump Berlin it's
incredible wow so he there happened to be photographers because it was such a crazy thing that was happening they have
it on video there were photographers but they got him jumping over the wall they rushed him into a military van took him
away he moved to Bavaria he worked at Audi for 30 years after the fall of the wall he tried to go back to East Germany
and see his family but they considered him a traitor and wouldn't talk to him um and he dealt with a lot of depression
and mental health issues um for the rest of his life and he died by suicide in
1998 is that picture 56 years old it's a really it's a really great
encapsulation of humanity of I'm on this side I'm told to
do a job and I don't think that's a job I should do so I'm going to do a thing and then I'm a trade her to the people
going back to our previous conversation like it's all about perspective and it's all so [ __ ] complicated is he a
traitor is he not a traitor is he a good person or bad like it's just like like it's just so there's so much Nuance to
it but man I can't imagine I can't imagine being that guy and 19 years old
yeah there's a there's a picture of another one there him jumping and there's him in the van he just like a
baby he's just like a little he's a kid you know making this decision to leave everything he's ever known like a split
second crazy so that was in that was like two days after so still 1961 a lot
of people have tried to cross the wall with some more fun stories on December 5th 1961 27-year-old Harry deerling he
was a train a train engine driver and he was driving a train and he was like this is the last train to Freedom we are
crashing through the wall and he could like defer the train because it one of her train tracks obviously you know like
there were trains so he was like he had on his train he had 32 people on board
seven of them were part of his family um and he he called it again the last train
to Freedom he said we're going he pressed the gas as hard as he could and
crashed through the wall um most people were super excited um the trains um
conductor so his boss and seven other people um had not known about the plans and they ran back to East Germany but
everybody else ran into the west and you just ran to the west and you just ran and you were there you know yeah yeah imagine I mean it's a border right like
it's a border and so if you get there you're just there like you can't shoot
in there because then you're killing a citizen of that side I assume so he
barreled through the wall um which is exciting um in May of 1962 there was a
tunnel called the senior citizen tunnel um a bunch of people in their 70s and 80s dug a tunnel and it's unprecedented
in that it was a tunnel that had a really tall ceiling so a lot of the tunnels the people dug you had to crawl
through which makes sense CU that like saves time but these like 70 and 80 year olds built the tunnel and they got to
West Berlin and when asked why they built it so so high one of them said we
wanted to walk to Freedom with our wives comfortably and unbowed no which is very brave um and brave because they were
older in on August 17th 1962 this is actually Z this is not has doesn't have
to do with the bar um an 18-year-old kid named Peter fect tried to escape his sister lived in West Berlin him and his
friend Helm Helmut kbec had a plan so they hid near the wall and they went to
run across it they're like we're going to run from you know from the fence across the death zone and climb the wall
and get out um they did it in the middle of the night and Helmut made it so
Peter's friend Helmut made it across and and he was F he did it but Peter was shot in the pelvis right at the foot of
the wall so he made it over the fence across the death zone and then was shot in the pelvis and he laid next to the
Berlin Wall kind of entangled in barbed wire and bled out for like an hour and
no one could help him the people on the west berin were afraid because they were afraid to get shot so they um they threw
him some bandages he couldn't reach them he was just bleeding out on the East Berlin side they didn't help him he
screamed for an hour there were hundreds of people watching this happen um and he
died 3 5 years later in March 1997 two East German guards Ral Friedrich and
Eric shriber were tried for Peter's death and they were sentenced to 20 months probation and they said that they
were sorry you know also they were children everyone was in the story you know um so Peter bled out and and died
they um the West Germans got his body after a couple of hours and took him back to West Germany um so now remember
the poll so the pole is is a certain a certain height um in 19 63 a a man named
hin maxner and his girlfriend and his mother wanted to flee so he measured the pole it was 37 and a half inches from
the ground so very low and so hins went to every rental car place he could find
till he found the lowest car he could find he ended up with an Austin Healy Sprite it's like a little convertible
car he took off the windshield he deflated the tires a little bit so it would be even lower he drove he put his
girlfriend in the back seat she lay down in the back seat and his girlfriend's mother in the trunk surrounded by bricks
to make it a little bit heavier and to protect her from any gunfire so he drove to Checkpoint Charlie was talking to the
people they were like give me your papers all the things and then he just gunned it and he went there's a picture
of this as well he went underneath the um the pole he had to duck down and went
all the way through and he said quote I figured it would take the guards 3 seconds to draw their weapons and once I
knew once they knew what I was doing I knew Margaret's mother was protected by the bricks I felt I could make it about
3 Ines to spare and now we can get married so he just drove really really
fast as low as possible and got this is this is incredible I I know this car I'm looking at the pictures I actually know
this car and nobody today much less back
then would look at this car without a wind and think that's normal like it is so obviously supposed to have it dude
there's a picture of him bending his head down yeah going under the that's
incredible is that incredible and there's also a picture that they probably posed for later but that shows
his his girlfriend in the back and the mom in the trunk oh yeah oh my God that's
unbel yeah for them I know um in on October 22nd so this year an American
Diplomat named Alan Lightner wanted to cross to go to the op Opera in East Berlin which is usually okay but it like
weird and there were all there's a standoff and there were 10 Soviet tanks and 10 US tanks just staring at each
other for days you know which is like a big standoff then eventually had to like call everybody down but everybody was
like going to murder each other in 1963 a trapes artist named HST Klein climbed
all the wires because they wouldn't let him P be in the circus in East Berlin and he was like all I know how to do is
be in the circus if they like stop circuses or something and so he he traped over all the wires across it and
he made it he fell actually fell off the wires into West Berlin he broke both of his arms and um usually in like a couple
articles I read that was kind of where it ended um but then I found an article in the New York Times from 1964 that
said his wife kept writing him letters saying that I can't live without you and so you have to come back so he went back
to East Berlin he was sent to prison and she got divorced and got remarried which is like super unfair come on just my
spin but uh you know a bummer so a couple things that happened that was
like what happened in like a weird kind of like normal way is like one guy he saw a bus
going like across the checkpoint really slowly so he just like stood next to it and walked with it and then was there
you know like he was like some of it was like opportune like no one's looking I'm just going to [ __ ] go you know life
was so much easier before cell phones and CCT TV cameras ex yeah totally he
just like you people just like kind of accidentally walk in be like [ __ ] I'm here you know and then like be excited and like go and people West berin would
like help them you know in West Germany um in 1964 there was another famous
tunnel um it was called tunnel 57 it was built from a bakery in West Berlin to an
ouse in East Berlin and um it it was
uh what was it was 145 M long it was the longest and the deepest tunnel um 35
West berliners um including uh a man named Reinhardt furer who is a ended up
being an astronaut schol aren't that many astronauts it was cool end up being an astronaut um and many students from
the FR University in West Berlin helped build the tunnel from October 1964 from April to October 1964 so what
happened was people in East Germany they would get to this ouse and um and and
Reinhardt who turned out to be became an astronaut later in life would tell them where to go and tell them to get in the tunnel and get them to do there
unfortunately one of the people that was in the group was a Stacey agent and um so they were only able to get um 35
people through they thought they would have get be able to sa like 120 people but ended up being less than that um
there was a uh a young man who was an East an East German soldier named Egon
Schultz he was 21 he was killed by Friendly Fire during the when they finally caught them doing it um but he
was healed as a hero in in East Germany for a long time and also just a baby
yeah like these guys are so young like I know I don't know what they're doing
um so there are um a couple other things
there's a family oh on July 28th 1965 a guy named hin holle he was an engineer
and with him and his family he had figured out how to he tied like essentially a rope to a hammer and threw
the hammer over the wall and they zip lined out of East Germany that's pretty smart exciting
yeah so him and his family he had his K his his son and his wife go first and then he went a lot of the time like
you're bringing your whole family with you you know like you want everybody to leave um people like didn't really know
like it was almost like I don't believe this is happening so he just like got through like he used a bicycle wheel
axle to you on the zipline and just like went um so they made it I I can't imagine
risking my life is one thing but it's like I'm going to risk my wife and my
two kids it's like 300% yeah crazy and like this this so
another story is in 1979 there was a hot air balloon it wasn't in Berlin but it was like across the border uh and
there's a couple movies that are about this one um that were made in like the 80s but um in the town of Pock which is
in East Germany there were two men one named Peter strelnik and um gter vetzel
so Gunter vetel is still alive he was born in 1955 Peter stck was born in 1942
he died in 2017 but they saw a TV show about how air balloons and they were like huh interesting
and that's that's cool and the first thing they did is they thought that they
would build it out of cotton and so they went they had to drive really far because there also like this is the in
the these places like Soviet East Germany like your neighbors tell on you you can't do anything suspicious you
know so you can't just buy a ton of cotton like a ton of fabric people will be like what are you doing ton ofum yeah
so they drove um to another city and they bought they said they were in a camping club and they were building
tents so they bought all this cotton and the gondola that they used is so [ __ ]
terrifying it is sheet metal and then holes on like the four sides of the
square and then there's like a a rope around it every five inches but it's like four ropes I'm good it's like very
very very unsafe and it's like filled with gas you know oh my gosh
Germany I know so they tried the first time with the cotton it didn't work the cotton burned and it wasn't like it was
too porous so they tried again they got they settled on synthetic taida they
used a full flamethrower and propane tanks to make it work which is just like
bananas and so [ __ ] scary so on July 3rd 1979 the stnick family tried to escape
it was 1:30 in the morning they get onto the balloon they go up into the clouds you know they're moving into West
Germany they end up Landing 130 MERS from the border but they're still on the
east side they're not sure where they are but they um find a piece of litter that's like from a bakery on East
Germany so they know they're in East Germany still and they spend 9 hours like slowly leaving they they abandon
the balloon spend 9 hours slowly leaving um and they get home and they call in sick to work and they're like oh we're
sick you know like they would have been found out like they would have known so they had to like pretend all these things happened um so that was their
second balloon but then they're like [ __ ] they found the balloon they know that someone's trying to escape via
balloon so they had to really quickly make a third balloon um and so the
thirdd balloon flight was on September 15th 1979 both of their families were on the
balloon again this like terrifying piece of metal in the air at 2 am so it was
Peter and his wife they were 37 their son Frank was 15 their son Andreas was 11 gter and his wife were 24 their son
Peter was five and their daughter or their son Andreas was two so like you're holding a freaking baby on this
terrifying thing up in the air I just so scary um the first thing that happened that went wrong they cut the lines at
different times so the balloon tilted and then part of it caught on fire but they had a fire extinguisher so they put
it out so the balloon like had holes in it and kept catching on fire in certain ways and they had to really gun it with the fire they had to do the flamethrower
like as high as it could possibly go and they could like keep going keep going they were spotted by both the East and
West German forces but like no one really knew what to do and they ended up Landing 10 kilometers from the border
well into West Germany um Peter uh gter w broke his leg but other than that
everybody was fine and um the families their families in East Germany were
arrested because they were like you must have known eventually they were let they were let out by Amnesty International So
eventually they were let out um but they landed in Bavaria and they stayed um after 1990 the stooks went back to their
old home to their like original home in East Germany but the wetle stayed in Bavaria and they live there for the rest
of their lives and they're still there yeah um and then a couple other ones two more
just quick quick fun stories so in the 1980s a woman named UTA Fleck she was a woman from Checkpoint Charlie she tried
to escape with her children she didn't live in Berlin she lived like outside of Berlin in East Germany she had sole
custody of her daughters and so she was going to go through Romania and have some fake passports made this is in 1982
and Romanian official was suspicious of her and they were taken up away at the airport she wasn't allowed to see her
kids um she was imprisoned for 4 years and she got released in a deal with the Allies but her daughters were given back
to their father who told them their mother was an Enemy of the State you know he was very much like your mom is
bad for wanting to leave um so Utah stood outside a Checkpoint Charlie for 6
months in 1984 with a big sign that said give me back my children wow and she stood there every
day to protest to get her girls back and in August of 1988 her daughters were
granted visas and um cuz they had been secretly trying to connect with her this whole time anyway and she they moved to
Bavaria and they live there now um in 2009 she was awarded the order of Merit
of the federal repu of Germany by the German president horse ker so you know
she's definitely LED as someone who was very brave for all things that she tried to do especially how much she worked to
get her kids back um and one of the last ones in 1989 in August just a few months before the wall fell two dudes I thought
wait I thought the wall F on 88 I thought it fell November
89 yeah November 89 okay sorry
um but a couple months before it fell um yeah it fell November 9th 1989 but one
of the last ones so a lot of people you know got out via like um hangliding they
hang glided over the wall um but in this time um these two brothers Nam Ino and
hogar Beth had two light aircraft which were like motorized handang gliders and they flew
over the Berlin wall into East Berlin one of them stayed in the air and kind of like circled the area the other one
landed and they grabbed their brother they had a brother who was left in East Germany and they grabbed the brother got
him back and went back to West Germany landed their hang glider planes abandoned them jumped in a car and drove
away it took 20 minutes which is very exciting for them they were able to just like ring out their brother um over time
5,000 people escaped over the wall some of them just ran some of them you know jumped out of buildings um dug
tunnels or hang gliders just you know pushed the gas on their car as fast as
possible um and went I don't know if you remember but like when I went to Checkpoint Charlie there was a car and
you had to find the person do you remember that there was like an old fashion car and it said find the
person yeah and you we looked everywhere and it was a person it was a mannequin obviously but they were in the seat like
inside of the seat itself like the cushion an had been taken away and they were like in there like all riled up
well rolled up in there um a lot of people got way yeah but that was a fun
thing so yeah my I just end with you don't take your family across the border unless it's dangerous to continue to
live live in the place that you were in before you know so a lot of people did
try to leave I also know this like man that I used to work for who was like a a delight in like the weirdest way
just like a really weird guy and he was he no um but he was from East Germany
and he was like a tank commander in the German Army because you have to do you have conscription you have to do either
um either like uh work at like a nonprofit or work do the Army after like 18 but he remembered having like his
first like Coca-Cola you know things like that like he was a kid when the wall fell but he remembered like seeing
the things that were happening West Germany and being like whoa you know so
it's not like that far away like it feels far away but like he's our age and he lived in East Germany and the wall
fell when he was like five no it's wild it's the fact that it happened when I was alive yeah I would have been four
years old or five years old at that time um it's crazy it's crazy like it it it's
so it is a actually is like kind of a good follow
to our last episode of like almost universally people are going
to want to do what is in their in their family's best interest yeah the
difference of like how you get there or what you think that is um I can't
imagine where you are yeah yeah I can't imagine doing what those people
did like I I feel I feel like be one of the ones I'm like I'd rather just live a life of just abject sadness and poverty
than try to run the gauntlet to get out of this country and you look at the people in North Korea who like make it
out into South Korea and you're like I don't have that like that's bra
totally real scary yeah or to your point before like
people crossing the Rio Grand and you know trying to cross in like I mean that's that's it's own bravery
so yeah you just want everyone wants what best for their
family yeah you know yeah it's matter of how you achieve it I
guess cool that's I have sorry I was thinking I was thinking
about um how when I started my podcast I started on that daily podcast about mle being
elected to the president of Argentina and some of those people who are coming
up from Texas are walking from Argentina because that's a lot yes how
many how many miles how many miles is it from that's that's like a human
experience that I just like cannot imagine you know it's un
unreal let's see how long that is let's do buenos
ARS to um so if you were to walk that uh it
can't it won't give you a time that's how hard it is yeah it won't
give you it is 14 hours 10 minutes driving it won't give you miles but
let's do some rough math no that's prob plane okay okay so it's probably like
7,000 miles if you do average 500 miles per hour for a plane 14 hours about
7,000 miles of somebody walking the get across from how many miles have I walked
in my life is it stepson I don't know yeah it's it's do that for fun no
it's a shocking Testament of what people will do for a better life their family um yeah so and and and so is the Berlin
wall and it was in our lifetime it's crazy yeah crazy no thank you for
sharing that Taylor um I know we've had a few interesting subjects so far this
week and hopefully we'll continue and if y'all want to hear other interesting topics that come to mind or or I don't
know maybe we just change this into a podcast about immigration I don't know let's not do that no I need to I'm gonna
find another [ __ ] volcano to talk about about volcano happens
fals um yeah thanks Faris no this was good I'm
I'm it's good it's challenging and it's good I'm like a I'm a real person who's
figuring stuff out and I like that about myself yeah same yeah we're just people
trying to do the best we can and that's what everybody's trying to do like that's the thing that unifies us that's
why we're not bad or whatever is like because we're all just trying to do the best we can with the knowledge we have
with the history we have and the family we have and that's okay yeah happy
anniversary happy anniversary Taylor um please write to us at dopod
gmail.com find us on the on the socials and tell us what you think otherwise we'll join you again next week thank you
thank you and one more thing I I'm behind on putting things on YouTube and I know that but I'm catching up right now so I will get us up to date on
YouTube I promise um I did just post our Chris Watts episode and someone commented that they think that his
girlfriend had something to do with it but I feel like no but I don't know I feel like no that
that poor woman imagine I feel so bad we follow we follow Amber Fry on Instagram
and like she's fine you know she's totally fine but like it's Al it's very strong of her to even like exist on
social media that was her fault you know what are you talking about am fry or the
other one say I'm talking about Amber fry but we we follow her on Instagram and like I'm very I am impressed that
she doesn't just hide in the world because like she didn't do anything wrong she thought she was dating someone
you know yeah whatever but then some on YouTube was like that Chris wat's girlfriend had something to do with the murder of his family and I'm like I feel
like none of the evidence says that and also like leave that poor woman alone leave her alone like how she had to
change her whole life like come on yeah um horrible but anyways thank you Taylor we'll go
ahead and cut things off and it is cut off as