Berlin Wall Escape Sites — Central

In 1962, Siegfried Noffke and Dieter Hötger dug a tunnel approximately 30 metres long from Sebastianstraße 82 in West Kreuzberg under the Wall to Heinrich-Heine-Straße 45–49 in East Berlin. The Wall ran down the centre of the street at this point. An information board erected by Berliner Unterwelten at the site documents this escape route.

In September 1962, 29 people escaped through a 135-metre tunnel dug from a disused factory on Bernauer Straße to a building on Schönholzer Straße in the East. The escape was filmed by an NBC television crew, producing the Emmy-winning documentary “The Tunnel” that brought worldwide attention to the plight of those trapped behind the wall.

A memorial plaque at Brunnenstraße 141 marks the site of an escape tunnel through which 37 people reached freedom from East to West Berlin. The tunnel was one of at least seven dug within a 350-metre stretch near Bernauer Straße. Today, Berliner Unterwelten e.V. maintains an access point here, allowing visitors to see the only […]

On 3–4 October 1964, 57 people crawled through a 12-metre-deep tunnel from a disused bakery cellar on Bernauer Straße to Strelitzer Straße in the East – the largest single mass escape through a tunnel during the wall’s existence. The operation was discovered during the second night when an East German border guard was fatally shot, […]

Two escape tunnels were dug on Zimmerstraße, close to Checkpoint Charlie. In summer 1962, a tunnel enabled an East German family to escape, but 20-year-old border guard Reinhold Huhn was shot dead by an escape helper during the attempt. In January 1972, three young East Berliners dug their own tunnel at Nr. 8–9 and reached […]