This story is dedicated to the memory of the 171 people who lost their lives seeking freedom from East Berlin. That’s how many people were killed between 1961 — when the wall went up — and 1989 — when the wall came back down again. Those twenty-eight years were some of the bleakest in German history.
One of the bright spots came when an American president, John F. Kennedy, visited a divided Berlin in June 1963. He told a crowd of thousands in front of the Berlin City Hall that “when one man is enslaved, all are not free . . . [so] all free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’ ”
I am a Berliner.
But despite the speeches, the wall remained for many years. And just as in our story, people tried to escape from East to West in all kinds of ways. In the beginning, before the fence became a wall, they ran across or swam across one of the rivers or canals that ran through Berlin. They jumped from buildings that looked over the line. Some made it; some didn’t. Some even escaped through the sewer system and dug tunnels. In fact, one of the first tunnels actually came up through a graveyard, until a woman accidentally discovered it by falling into the hole! And one of the most successful tunnels began in a basement near the line, just like in our story. Twenty-nine people made it to freedom through that tunnel.
One of the most interesting escapes came when two families — the Wetzels and the Strelzyks — secretly built a hot-air balloon and floated to freedom.
What does this tell us? That people will do just about anything to be free. And that sometimes, out of love, people will give their all so others can have that freedom. Dietrich Mendt, an East German pastor, used to quote Psalm 18 to explain why some East German Christians stayed behind the Iron Curtain, serving their neighbors and friends. “With God,” the psalmist wrote, “one is able to leap over walls!”
These Christians didn’t think the psalm told them to just jump over the wall, though. To them, it was a little more simple. They would stay and serve, and they would work for freedom.
Because for God, there really are no walls.