erfrom American spies and the criminal slave traders of West Germany." (Galante 1) On the morning of the 13th, Berliners awoke to discover telephones line dead between West and East Berlin and train services at a standstill. Families were separated, for the Wall had run through parks, public areas, and even buildings. The Wall did not hold them back from freedom. According to reports, official figures show that more than 400 people died trying to flee. Human-rights activists say that the true figure could be closer to 800. Many of these escape attempts were dramatic. People leapt form windows, tunneled and crept through sewers, rammed through the gates in steel-plated trucks, crawled through mud, and swam the icy waters of the city's rivers and canals. Even though the Wall created international crises, divided families, and spawned villains and gangsters, it also produced its heroes. Brave men and women who lived in the shadow of the Wall found ways to elude Communism. Escape soon became harder. The barbed wire was replaced with concrete slabs. Waterways were blocked by underground fences. Windows along the borders had bricks instead of glass. Getting across became increasingly difficult, and it required ingenuity as well as determination. In the first year alone, 14 attempts were made to breach the wall through driving into it. Many drove through legal checkpoints. Twice, East Germans escaped in a car so low that it could be driven right under the horizontal bars at the crossing points. Vertical bars were added to make it even more impossible. Many escaped in cleverly designed hiding places in cars driven by West Germans who could cross the border legally. Three escaped using Soviet Union military uniforms that a friend had sewn for them. Peter Fechter, an eighteen year old boy, was one of the first who tried to scale the wall outright. The East Germans shot him down while West Berliners heard Fechter's cries for help for nearly an ho...
