We risked our lives to cross Berlin Wall... three months before it was torn down
Her little body curled tightly against her father, Peggy playfully lifted her finger to her lips in the inky darkness of the cramped car boot as if to say “Hush”.
Hans-Peter Spitzner couldn’t see the seven-year-old’s gesture, or the smile he guessed went with it, but he could feel the movement through the sweltering air.
It was a huge relief. Because it told him she wasn’t petrified – not like he was.
Just as he’d told her, she was playing a silent game of hide-and-seek as they lay motionless in the boot of a stranger’s car waiting to pass through Checkpoint Charlie on the Eastern side of the Berlin Wall.
A cry, a cough or a sneeze and the guards circling the vehicle would fling open the boot. For Hans-Peter – at best – it would mean separation from his child and prison.
At worst, the border police would open fire indiscriminately.
This was August 1989 and Hans-Peter, on the watchlist of the East German Stasi – the feared secret police – was making a bold bid for freedom in the West with his daughter.
Three months later, on November 9, the Berlin Wall would fall after 28 years dividing the Communist East from the capitalist enclave of West Berlin.
The crumbling 30 years ago next week of that potent symbol of the Cold War was a momentous turning point, allowing jubilant East Berliners to flood the checkpoints.
But Hans-Peter could not have guessed that then. Or that he and Peggy would be the last East Germans to make a covert dash for freedom through Checkpoint Charlie.
All he knew was they needed to make a break, whatever the risk. And so he gambled, travelling to East Berlin and approaching every foreign soldier he saw until he found one ready to smuggle them in their car – a courageous American, Sergeant Erik Yaw.
Peter says: “Living in the German Democratic Republic was like living in a big prison. Trying to escape was very dangerous but we were desperate.
“I knew they could have shot at us. I could have been thrown in prison and my daughter placed in a state children’s facility. My life and my daughter’s were in danger.
“I was a little crazy,” he concedes, “but there was no other way I could see. I could no longer live this life.”
He recalls: “Everyone I asked said, ‘Sorry, it is too dangerous.’ Erik was my very last chance.
“When he said Yes, I cannot explain how I felt. Could this be true?
“Even in the boot of his car I did not know if I could trust him. But in that moment he was not a soldier, he was a human who wanted to help.
“He was a man with a very big heart.” The bond the two men made has lasted down the years.
As recently as last week, Erik, 59, travelled to Berlin to meet Hans-Peter, 65, and Peggy, 37, and they returned to the site where Checkpoint Charlie once stood.
From his home in Arizona, Erik says: “I see them as my family.
“When he asked me to help I was taken aback.
“I paused and it was like a film played in my head of all my life and how lucky I was to be free.
“I knew I could be jailed and deported, maybe kicked out of the army. But in front of me I saw a family. Peggy was hugging his leg, looking up with puppy eyes.
“And I knew this was an honest man and he had a reason to go. It took me one minute to say Yes.”
Hans-Peter grew up in Karl-MarxStadt – now once again known by its pre-war name of Chemnitz – and as a young adult he began questioning the system of the East Germany Communist Party.
As a teacher, he resented the doctrine he was forced to spout and the continual observation at the back of the classroom.
As someone unwise enough to speak out, he sat firmly on the watchlist of the Stasi, the Ministry for State Security. His career was blighted.
He says: “In no area of life did you know who to trust.”
The strict rationing also made life hard for him and wife Ingrid.
He recalls: “You couldn’t buy enough food. For a new car you had to wait 15 years, for a telephone connection in your house, 20 years.” The last straw came when Hans-Peter boycotted rigged elections to nominate trade union members at his school and the Stasi hauled him in for interrogation.
He recalls: “I had to remain seated with a bright lamp shining into my eyes.” The guards even took his scent on a piece of cloth for future “tracking”. Thoughts of escape began to grow.
East Germans were not permitted to travel to West Berlin and travel to other Western countries was restricted.
Desperate people had been trying to cross the Wall since it was built in 1961. Some succeeded but at least 138 were killed in the attempt.
Although an easing of East-West relations had started under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, no one had reason to believe the Wall was coming down any time soon.
In August 1989 Ingrid was granted permission to visit an aunt in Austria.
The proviso was that she went alone – keeping family at home as potential hostages was the state’s way of ensuring a resident’s return.
It was while she was away that HansPeter took the decision to escape.
He had recently learnt that foreign soldiers were not subjected to the same searches at the Wall and he knew that smuggling himself and Peggy out would be easier without Ingrid. She would then be free to join them in West Berlin.
Hans-Peter decided it was now o never. Packing just two bags of docu ments and clothes, he told Peggy they were going to meet Ingrid.
He drove them to East Berlin wher he had three days to find someone to take them across before his wife flew back to East Germany.
The pair lingered, eyeing foreign service personnel.
Keeping Peggy entertained with ice cream and games, he tried to blend in as just another tourist.
He says: “I approached five or six people the first day, 10 on the second