ur. Escapees tried to get under the Wall using sewer systems. (It soon became blocked by watchful East German police) In 1962, NBC, the American Public television network, provided funds to dig a tunnel from Bernauer St., in East Berlin, to Schoenholzer St., in West Berlin. "That September, the TV network filmed the escape of fifty-six refugees before flooding shut down the tunnel." (Mirabile 10) Probably the longest and the most famous tunnel was the one built in 1964 by Wolfgang Fuchs. This tunnel was Fuchs's seventh, and it was 140 ft. long, almost 40 ft. below the city, and about 28 inches high inside. It took six months to build, and 57 people were able to use it before it was discovered. Man's intelligence and ingenuity was constantly being tested to cross the Wall. "One man threw a hammer and a line from the roof of a building, pulled a cable, and with his wife and son, slid down it in a homemade chair lift to safety on the other side." (Mirabile 11) Another man built his own submarine to drag him across the Baltic Sea to Denmark. Two families flew from East Germany to West in a homemade hot-air balloon. All these people wouldn't let a Wall ruin their lives. They wouldn't let a Wall keep them from a life of freedom. They wouldn't let a Wall crush their hope. For 28 years the Berlin Wall stood as a grim symbol of the gulf between the Communist East and the Non-Communist West. When Hungary opened its borders with Austria, over 12,000 people escaped in a period of three days. It was reported that about 5,000 people made it safely, and about 5,000 people were captured. A wave of democratization swept throughout Europe, and at the same time East Germany's communist leadership was slowly but surely becoming ousted from power. Finally on November 9, 1989, at 10:00 at night, the German leader Egon Krenz ordered the Wall to be opened. After twenty-eight years, two months, and twenty-seven days, Berlin once again became a city. The old Be...
