Status: 08/13/2021 9:17 a.m.
When the wall was built 60 years ago, it was clear: the GDR was ready to do everything to prevent its citizens from fleeing. But there were courageous helpers who risked everything for freedom.
Burkhart Veigel stands in the middle of the former no man’s land on Bernauer Strasse in Berlin. Here, on the so-called death strip, formerly surrounded by walls on the left and right, he talks about what he did 60 years ago. And about why he did it: putting yourself at risk in order to help others. “Freedom plays an extremely important role for me. That has always been my obsession. That’s why I persevered as an escape helper for so long,” he says.
And look back at how it all began for him in 1961 as a student in Berlin. Veigel attended his first lecture after the semester break, a fellow student spoke to him: “We’re getting people out of the GDR. Are you going to join us?” It didn’t take Veigel long to think about it, in the evening he had brought his first refugee to West Berlin with the passport of a similar looking West Berliner. And then he just continued seamlessly.
Burkhart Veigel – One of the most successful escape helpers in German history
Andre Kartschall, RBB, August 13, 2021 10:52 am
Occupation: escape helper, part-time job: medical student
Officially, he was a student, and over the years he chose medicine. “That was easy for me,” says Veigel. “That was a lot of science, logical thinking.” Rationality always helped him a lot. For him, his job as an escape helper was something that he – with all his passion for freedom – approached systematically. Even in retrospect, there is initially a cool analysis. “It is estimated that a maximum of 400 people escaped from the GDR through tunnels, 800 through the sewer system and 10,000 with the help of false passports.”
Because it wasn’t just Veigel who brought GDR citizens across the border with ID cards. Together with two acquaintances, he ran a “conspiratorial escape aid organization”, as he calls it. Many only knew each other through cover names, Veigel was “the black one” because of his dark hair color at the time.
Burkhart Veigel helped about 650 people to flee.
Always one step ahead of the Stasi
At first they simply borrow passports from West Berliners they know. They then hand them over to GDR citizens who look similar. As that gets more difficult, they start forging, including foreign passports. A Belgian official gives them blank papers on their own initiative, which they only have to provide with data and passport photos. “We were always one step ahead of the Stasi, in our heads we were simply faster than their bureaucracy.”
When the Stasi catches up and is on the trail of the passport forgers, Veigel and his accomplices change their strategy. They smuggle people who want to flee into cars from the Eastern Bloc. Her biggest coup: a converted Cadillac. They create enough space under the dashboard to accommodate a person. “Once it was a two-meter man,” says Veigel. “The Cadillac was a monster.”
Converted glove compartment – Veigel smuggled people from the GDR into it.
Image: Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service (BStU)
Helped 650 people
Veigel spends most of his student days as an escape helper. Only after about ten years does he break up and settle down as a doctor. But his greatest passion remains to help people into freedom. There were a total of 650. “Approximately,” as he emphasizes. “We didn’t keep a book back then, we had other things to do.
The decades have not changed much in his convictions. Veigel still gets very passionate when he talks about fundamental rights like freedom of expression. “Bringing freedom to a person is much more valuable to me than putting a joint back in order.” And stands there with a big smile, in the middle of the former no man’s land between East and West Berlin.