ng the erection of the wall, 12,316 East Germans escaped to West Berlin or West Germany. This figure was released on the first anniversary of die Mauer by the West German Refugee Ministry, which, in common with other government departments, in both Bonn and West Berlin, has been extremely reluctant to provide information about refugees—particularly any details concerning the time, place, or means of their escape. Through voluntary censorship, the same policy has been followed by the West Berlin and West German press. The reason for the secrecy is, of course, to avoid jeopardizing the escape of other refugees. While the ban is not applied severely to dramatic escapes that occur in public view or are accomplished in ways that have little chance of being used successfully a second time, the majority of the escapes have been reported in the West Berlin newspapers, if at all, with the utmost brevity. “Within the last twenty-four hours,” a typical item that appeared in October, 1961, read, in full, “some twenty inhabitants of East Berlin succeeded in escaping to West Berlin.”
At least a third of the successful escapes made during the first year of the wall’s existence took place in the first two months or so, when the border situation was confused and relatively fluid. On one day in September, 1961, fifty-three refugees reached West Berlin, six of them by swimming the Havel River. A few nights later, an East Berlin couple also swam the river, pushing in front of them a child’s bathtub containing their three-year-old daughter. For several weeks after the wall went up, quite a few refugees reported that they had been able to cross the border because the Vopos had looked the other way, or had merely fired a warning shot or two in the air, in an effort to avoid drawing suspicion on themselves. In some instances, the Vopos went even further. At a stretch of barbed-wire fence where two Vopos, aged nineteen and eighteen, were on duty, an East German mechanic appealed to the older one for permission to cross the border with his wife and daughter so that the three of them could live near their relatives. The Vopo agreed, and, while his comrade stood aside, helped the family make their way through the barrier. Then the older Vopo said to the younger one, “Let’s follow them,” and they did. To outwit border guards who were not so obliging, some East Berliners devised ingenious stratagems. A photographer named Horst Beyer convinced the East German authorities that a good stunt to help publicize the twelfth anniversary of Ulbricht’s regime, on October 10, 1961, would be to publish pictures of a few shapely members of a Communist women’s sports club in the act of presenting the guardians of the wall with bouquets. He accordingly took a few athletic beauties to Checkpoint Charlie, and, as the girls presented their flowers to the Vopos, snapped one photograph after another. In posing his group, Beyer moved closer and closer to the white line on the pavement marking the border, and when one of the Vopos helpfully called out, “Be careful that you don’t step across the line!” Beyer turned and ran Into West Berlin. Late one evening, a couple of weeks later, a young East German artist named Fritz Berger put on khaki work pants, a G.I. shirt, tie, and forage cap, and a khaki tunic that had originally been part of a Czech uniform; on the buttons of the tunic he had engraved the letters “U.S.” with a pocketknife, and on the sleeve he had sewn a Second World War shoulder patch of the 15th United States Air Force. He then proceeded to Checkpoint Charlie, gave the Vopos a friendly wave, and strolled on across the border.
Meanwhile, a few East Berliners managed to force their way across the border. At two-forty-five one morning in September, 1961, a young man driving a delivery van approached the Brandenburg Gate at seventy miles an hour and crashed through the barrier before the Vopos had a chance to fire a shot. Within the next three days, two heavy trucks carrying five more refugees rammed through other crossing points. Not long afterward, three East B