The place is shrouded in silent mourning. The photographs of the dead are lined up in small metal windows. The names and dates are linked to the destinies during the Wall period and I feel very sorry for those affected.Ī plaque in the middle of the lawn also honors their memory. I read for example: "September 25, 1961: Escape family B." Or: "August 10, 1961: Eviction of Bernauer Strasse No. They recall escape attempts, evictions, deaths. The round commemorative plaques can be found along Bernauer StrasseĪs I walk down the street, I discover small round commemorative plaques on the floor. "The memorial is investigating the cases. "The East German government covered up many incidents," says a tourist guide next to me. Among them were six people on Bernauer Strasse. Most of them had an accident or were shot while attempting to escape. Border guards, refugees, escape helpers, but also uninvolved people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. To date we know of 140 deaths at the Berlin Wall. Ida was lucky compared to many other people.
"I was sure that the border would not last forever." A few months after the trial, her engagement was broken off. Deep down, Ida did not give up her faith that one day her home country would be united again. It bordered on a miracle: The court acquitted Ida. "My mother had a nervous breakdown because she was worried about me."
Mauer abriss trial#
"For three months my family did not know where I was." Only when I went to trial did they see each other again. Then she was locked up in a cell and interrogated every day. She would have been out more quickly and would have been able to see him again. Her interrogator suggested that she work for the Stasi and spy on her fiancé. Ida was detained for three months by the Stasi, the secret state police. Only when we reach the lawn does she breathe a sigh of relief and continue telling her story. It seems as if she can still feel the wall. "Many people just disappeared this way." It took Ida some effort to go through the metal bars with me. Men in plain clothes stopped her, she was arrested on the spot. "After that, we could only wave to each other across the Wall." But one evening she came too close to the wall. Before the Wall was built, it was still possible to see each other. She lived in Prenzlauer Berg, in the East. Ida's fiancé lived in Berlin-Neukölln, in the West. "I had been engaged for three years." The construction of the wall separated the young couple. Back then, in August 1961, Ida was 21 years old. "I haven't been here since then," she says in a shaky voice. Here I meet Ida, a little elderly lady who doesn't want to give me her last name. On the other side of the street is the memorial's documentation and visitor center. Today, you can easily pass through bars where the Wall once stood Wrong place, wrong time Tourists and school groups take photos, lay their hands on the Berlin Wall, children run slalom through the rusty bars. Here the former death strip extended with barbed wire and mines. Where it was dismantled after 1989, high rusted metal bars trace the former course of the border. You can still see its traces today: a few parts of the wall have been preserved. The border ran directly through Bernauer Strasse. On August 13, 1961, Communist East-Germany erected the Wall that separated East and West Berlin. Bernauer Strasse was still passable, but that came to an abrupt end in 1961.
It is a historical place and since 1998 a memorial to the division of Germany.Īfter the end of the Second World War, the street was divided into East and West: on one side the Soviet-controlled sector, on the other the French sector. But the Bernauer is more than just a road. Cars and trams pass me, people cross my way. I walk along Bernauer Strasse, at first glance a street like any other. It's one of the last beautiful autumn days in Berlin. Sunbeams can be seen shining on the asphalt.
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