REPORTER: Amos Roberts

BRIAN HANRAHAN:  I'm standing on top of the Berlin Wall which for years has been the most potent symbol of the division of Europe.

PETER JENNINGS: Just a short while ago astonishing news from East Germany, where the East German authorities have said in essence that the Berlin Wall doesn’t mean anything anymore.

BRIAN HANRAHAN:  There can be few better illustrations of the changes that are sweeping across this continent than the party which is taking place here on top of it tonight.

PETER JENNINGS: The wall that the Germans put up in 1961 to keep its people in will now be breached by anyone who wants to leave.

NEWSREEL:  As the communist barrier between East and West Berlin grows higher and stronger the more determined grows the will of those in the East to escape.

It's now more than 50 years since these dramatic pictures showed the desperation of those who ended up on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. Later, the wall would become a high concrete barrier with armed guards. Escape was only for the brave, or the fool-hardy.

KARL-HEINZ RICHTER (Translation): Back then, I led one of the most spectacular escapes. In a period of six weeks, I helped 17 of my friends to flee. I had committed one of the worst crimes you could commit here. You got a life sentence or the death penalty for it.

In 1964, a group of young men came up with the idea of jumping aboard a train, passing through East Berlin on its way to the West. Karl-Heinz Richter mast minded the escape of several of his friends.

KARL-HEINZ RICHTER (Translation): This is the place where one of the most dramatic escapes ended.

When it was his turn, he climbed up to the railway tracks with his friend. A German television documentary recreated what happened next. The friend jumped aboard but Karl Heinz couldn't get a secure grip.

KARL-HEINZ RICHTER (Translation): I fell from the train, ran back and I jumped down right here. I lay here with two broken legs, a broken arm and ribs and I was unconscious. Once I came to, I dragged myself to my parents’ place, 3.5 kilometres away. That was the end of me – one week later I was arrested.

The 17-year-old was sent to this notoriously brutal prison in East Berlin, run by the Stasi, the secret police. But the risk of imprisonment, or even death, didn't deter those desperate to escape. Hasso Herschel had escaped to West Berlin where he worked as a people smuggler, or escape agent as they were known. At first, he used false passports but the East German Government soon wised up and Hasso looked for another escape route.

HASSO HERSCHEL: No, it was possible to cross the border on the feet, it wasn't possible to fly over the border. So we decided to dig under the wall.

NEWSREEL: On the night of May 9th, 1962, a half hour before midnight, the tunnel started.

The American NBC network bankrolled, as well as documented, this crazy plan. To rescue East German citizens right under the nose, literally, of the communist regime.

NEWSREEL:  A triangle, they decided, would be the best shape.

They worked around-the-clock in three eight-hour shifts, tunnelling for over 100m from West to East Berlin, beneath the wall and border fortifications.

NEWSREEL: Eight young men dug endlessly in that deep earth.

And this is Hasso.

NEWSREEL: This digger, the man with the beard, Hasso Herschel, was a refugee himself. He was working to rescue his sister, who lived in Dresden with her husband and baby.

REPORTER:  What did you think about all day when you were digging every day, week after week?

HASSO HERSCHEL: This bloody communists!

Now tourists can visit a replica of Hasso's handy work.

HASSO HERSCHEL: This is quite a good work, a reconstruction of the tunnel we built half a century ago.

REPORTER: How long would it take you to big, say, one metre of tunnel?

HASSO HERSCHEL: From half a metre a day to 10cm or 5cm a day, one day that was what we could manage. The best day was nearly one metre, but that was very, very rare.

It took nine months to complete the tunnel. This is the view from West Berlin, past the wall to the building where it finally surfaced. It was Hasso who was responsible for crawling through to the East to rendezvous with the refugees.

HASSO HERSCHEL: This is the road where the tunnel ended, in this house number 7: And in the middle of the road was barbed wire, so people could walk only on this side from the barbed wire. This is the window of the cellar where the tunnel ended. Here, I waited for the escaper, in this room.

It became known as Tunnel 29, for the 29 people who used it to escape to the West. They were all friends and relatives of their rescuers. This is Hasso's sister with her daughter. Four days later there was a party to celebrate their reunion. But not every escape attempt ended with such touching scenes.

KARL-HEINZ RICHTER (Translation): What we see here, for example, was a prison cell. There was a narrow plank bed, a bucket for a toilet, emptied once a day, and that was it.

The Stasi prison Karl-Heinz Richter was sent to after his escape attempt was so secret it was left all maps. Now, it's a museum and memorial with former inmates as tour guides.

KARL-HEINZ RICHTER (Translation): This is where I spent my first six months. For the first ten weeks, I couldn’t even have a wash. There was nothing here. My clothes weren’t changed. The first interrogation lasted 24 hours, without a break. I was beaten till I was unconscious. They wanted to know the escape point.  I couldn’t give it away because that night during my interrogation, the last two of my friends were trying to escape.

As he was being questioned, Karl Heinz heard a young woman screaming nearby.

KARL-HEINZ RICHTER (Translation): And during this interrogation, someone said to me “By the way, we have your little slut here too.” They meant my girlfriend, Karin. 17 years old like me, my great love.

Karl Heinz was denied medical attention for the bones he'd broken falling from the railway tracks. As the ringleader for a mass escape, he was targeted for special cruelty.

KARL-HEINZ RICHTER (Translation): I was constantly scared. I was afraid that if I confessed they’d kill me, shoot me. During interrogations they’d say “You bastard, you won’t get out of here. Your bullet is already in the barrel.”

This wasn't an idle threat. In 1962, 18-year-old Peter Fechter was shot trying to scale the wall and left to bleed to death. 50 people died in the first year of the wall. The risks taken by those trying to escape were dramatized in movies like ‘The Spy Who Came in From the Cold’. This scene showed the ruthlessness of the border guards at Checkpoint Charlie, which is unrecognisable today.

This Cold War icon, a flashpoint where World War Three could have been started is now Berlin's tackiest destination. But next-door is a museum that documents many brave and ingenious escapes. Including Hasso Herschel's tunnel.

HASSO HERSCHEL:  And this is my sister, who comes through now.

REPORTER: It's a pretty crazy sort of home movie for you to have?

HASSO HERSCHEL: Yes, that's true.

Hasso smuggled people out of the East for almost 10 years.

HASSO HERSCHEL: This is my old welding machine.

This hollow welding machine was one of many ruses used to fool the border guards.

REPORTER: So even if they looked inside, they couldn't see the people?

HASSO HERSCHEL: They couldn't see the people, no.

In total, Hasso says he helped a thousand people escape. By 1989, communist regimes were crumbling across Europe. For 28 years, East Germany has used the Berlin Wall to keep its citizens away from the West and for almost as long, 25 years, Harald Jäger guarded the wall.

HARALD JÄGER (Translation): I saw my role back then like this...I had a duty towards the state, namely, making sure the borders of our state were protected. I was based over there where that supermarket is now. That’s where the checkpoints were for incoming trucks, cars and pedestrians.

On the 9th of November 1989, Lieutenant-Colonel Harald Jäger commanded the border crossing here on Bornholmer Street. A movie has recently been made about the historic role he played in opening the Berlin Wall that night. The first opening in the Iron Curtain had taken place in Hungary a few months before, and the East German Government faced massive demonstrations calling for more freedom. At his post in Berlin, Harald Jäger watched a press conference announcing the border would be opened immediately. But no-one had told the border guards.

MOVIE (Translation): When will this become effective?

As far as I know, right away.

What is this shit?

HARALD JÄGER (Translation): Within 10, 20 minutes, the first East German citizens showed up at the checkpoint.

MOVIE (Translation): Can we cross, or what?

If you have a visa.

The comrade didn’t mention a visa, did he?

HARALD JÄGER (Translation): And minute by minute, more people arrived.

MOVIE (Translation): Open the gate! Open the gate!

How many people are there? – I don’t know. A thousand!

HARALD ÄGER (Translation): So many, in fact all East German citizens, were screaming for the freedom to travel.

Harald repeatedly called his superior to ask for orders. But there are none.

MOVIE (Translation): Stay on the line and keep your trap shut, ok?

HARALD JÄGER (Translation): He said something like “Listen to what they’re saying upstairs.” They were saying “Is this Jäger in any position to assess the situation or is he just acting out of cowardice?”

MOVIE (Translation): You can hear for yourself what’s going on out here! Open the gate we’re coming back!

HARALD JÄGER (Translation): And I held the telephone receiver out the window and I yelled “If you don’t believe me, just listen to what the people are saying.” I was under enormous pressure. On one side, pressure from the East German citizens and on the other, pressure from my colleagues. The resulting situation was such that we had to consider the possibility that it might all end in violence. So my first thought was to prevent that from happening. So I went to the relevant officer and I ordered him to open the barrier and let all East German citizens leave, without checks.

MOVIE (Translation): Open the barrier.

HARALD JÄGER (Translation): After we opened the barrier, the masses broke into cheers. It’s impossible to describe it. You had to be there.

HASSO HERSCHEL: That was the greatest surprise I ever had in my life. Nobody accounted for this. Nobody.

REPORTER: So when the wall was built, it wasn't a surprise, but when it fell...

HASSO HERSCHEL: It was a surprise, yes.

KARL-HEINZ RICHTER (Translation): I heard about the fall of the Wall on the radio and headed for Bornholmer Street with my wife.

Karl-Heinz Richter had eventually been released from prison and deported to West Berlin.

KARL-HEINZ RICHTER (Translation): At first I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Then thousands of people started streaming past us from the Eastern Sector. Then it became clear...The Wall is open! An unbelievable moment.

HARALD JÄGER (Translation): My whole world fell apart at that time, I understood that East Germany, as it existed on November 9, could no longer exist from November 10.

There were mixed emotions for Karl-Heinz Richter.

KARL-HEINZ RICHTER (Translation): I thought “Look at this...Millions of people can now enjoy freedom without having done anything against this system. They didn’t resist. They just conformed.” And for a few days I had to struggle with that...with my doubt.

Karl Heinz families suffers to this day as a result of his failed escape attempt. His wife was repeatedly rape after she, too, was jailed. Their daughter was made a ward of the state while they were in prison and is now estranged from her father.

KARL-HEINZ RICHTER (Translation): For 15 years I’ve had no contact with my daughter. She reproached me, saying I shouldn’t have done what I did.  “If you have family, you shouldn’t resist.”

Those who suffered at the hands of the Stasi find the memories hard to erase. A few years ago, Karl Heinz thought he recognised a Stasi agent in a supermarket.

KARL-HEINZ RICHTER (Translation): He acted very strangely, got a bit aggressive and I just had to knock him down. There was a lot of fuss, trouble with the police...I never did anything like that again. You can’t do that sort of thing. But sometimes you just lose it.

25 years after the wall collapsed, what remains has become a spectacle, for tourists, shoppers and graffiti artists. It's only an older generation that remembers the pain it caused and the lives it changed forever.

KARL-HEINZ RICHTER (Translation): I would do exactly what I did, time and again, because I don’t want to live under a dictatorship. And now we’re free. Now in my old age, I’m free.  Wonderful.

Reporter/Camera
AMOS ROBERTS

Producer
ALLAN HOGAN

Fixer
KITTY LOGAN

Editor
MICAH MCGOWN

Graphics
HUGH SCHULTZ

Translations
CLAUDIA STERN
MARIANNE BOROWIEC

Subtitles
PETER TEMPLETON

Additional Footage
Reuters
Faszination Freiheit – Spectakulaere Fluchtgeschichten (AZ Media TV)
The Tunnel – NBC America
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold – Salem Films Limited
Open The Wall – Beta Film

4th November 2014