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Chronicle 1962

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    • 5 June

      1962

      Axel Hannemann: born on April 27, 1945, shot dead in the Berlin border waters on June 5, 1962 while trying to escape (date of photo not known)
      The 17-year-old Axel Hannemann tries to escape to West Berlin across the Spree and is shot dead by border police. more

    • 8 June

      1962

      Behind the jetty of the Osthafen (East Harbour) inland port, the ship turns abruptly and makes for the bank on the West Berlin side at full throttle – all the escapees jump to shore uninjured. A successful escape on the passenger ship "Friedrich Wolf", 8 June 1962. (Photo: Polizeihistorische Sammlung des Polizeipräsidenten in Berlin)
      Behind the jetty of the Osthafen (East Harbour) inland port, the ship turns abruptly and makes for the bank on the West Berlin side at full throttle – all the escapees jump to shore uninjured. A successful escape on the passenger ship "Friedrich Wolf", 8 June 1962. (Photo: Polizeihistorische Sammlung des Polizeipräsidenten in Berlin)
      More than ten East Berliners hijack a pleasure steamer belonging to the Weisse Flotte line, cross the Spree amid a hail of bullets from GDR border guards and reach the bank on the West Berlin side. The West Berlin police, who are also shot at, return fire.

    • 10 June

      1962

      While two border policemen are showing their sub-machine guns to some children playing in the allotment garden, a shot goes off accidentally. The 13-year-old Wolfgang Glöde is fatally hit and collapses. Wolfgang Glöde, shot dead on June 11, 1962 in the "Sorgenfrei" garden settlement at the sector border between Berlin-Treptow and Berlin-Neukölln

    • 12 June

      1962

      Thirty-four East Berliners escape to West Berlin through tunnels.

    • 18 June

      1962

      Reinhold Huhn, shot dead at the Berlin Wall: West Berlin police photo of the tunnel exit in West Berlin [June 18, 1962]
      Reinhold Huhn: West Berlin police photo of the tunnel exit in West Berlin [June 18, 1962] (Photo: Polizeihistorische Sammlung/Der Polizeipräsident in Berlin)
      The East German border soldier Reinhold Huhn is shot by the West German "escape agent" Rudolf Müller as he confronts 22 East Berliners who want to escape through a tunnel to West Berlin. Only four people succeed in escaping.

      Directly after the escape, Western authorities claim that Reinhold Huhn was accidentally shot by a comrade. After the Wall comes down in 1989, Müller comes before a court charged with the killing of a GDR border soldier; in 2000 he is given a suspended sentence of one year for murder.
      RIAS report on a tunnel escape during which the GDR border soldier Reinhold Huhn is killed (with a statement by Senate spokesman Egon Bahr), 19 June 1962 (in German) (Source: Archiv Deutschlandradio, Broadcast: Die Zeit im Funk, Reporter: Erich Nieswandt, Helmut Fleischer)
      Reinhold Huhn, born on March 8, 1942, shot dead at the Berlin Wall on June 18, 1962       less

    • June 1962

      "In the month of June, the situation on the sector and zone border has become no less tense. Border policemen have made undiminished use of their firearms, shooting at escapees in 19 cases, at police officers in 3 cases, at West Berliners in 1 case and for unknown reasons in 11 cases," the West Berlin police write in their monthly report on developments at the sector and zone border. Report by the West Berlin police on the situation on the sector and zone border as well as suburban and East German Reichsbahn (Reich Railway) premises for the month of June 1962 (in German)
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