Chris Gueffroy lived his entire 20 years trapped behind the Berlin Wall, unable to reach freedom just on the other side. The imposing structure ran nearly 100 miles, stood 12 feet high in most places, and had 300 watchtowers manned by armed guards. It divided the city into two vastly different worlds: democratic West Berlin and, where Gueffroy lived, Communist East Berlin, controlled by the Soviet Union.
For most of the 1.3 million East Berliners, it was illegal to cross the wall. Attempting to do so could get you thrown in prison—or worse. But Gueffroy, four months shy of his 21st birthday, wanted to see the world. Close to midnight on February 5, 1989, he and a friend, Christian Gaudian, tried to scale the wall. That’s when the guards, with orders to shoot to kill, raised their automatic rifles and took aim.
Today, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gueffroy’s story and the stories of hundreds of others like him reflect the desperate acts people undertook to flee the totalitarian regime of the Soviet Union.
“Human beings have a basic desire for a measure of freedom, to move around, to do things, to think and create,” says historian Frederick Taylor, author of The Berlin Wall. “And I think you can’t, in the end, suppress it.”
Chris Gueffroy lived his entire 20 years trapped behind the Berlin Wall. He was unable to reach freedom just on the other side. The massive structure ran nearly 100 miles and stood 12 feet high in most places. Armed guards manned its 300 watchtowers. The wall divided the city into two vastly different worlds. Gueffroy lived in Communist East Berlin, which the Soviet Union controlled. Democratic West Berlin was on the other side of the wall.
For most of the 1.3 million East Berliners, it was illegal to cross the wall. Attempting to do so could get you thrown in prison—or worse. But Gueffroy, four months shy of his 21st birthday, wanted to see the world. Close to midnight on February 5, 1989, he and a friend, Christian Gaudian, tried to scale the wall. That’s when the guards, with orders to shoot to kill, raised their automatic rifles and took aim.
It’s been 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today, there are hundreds of stories from people like Gueffroy. They reflect the desperate acts people undertook to flee the totalitarian regime of the Soviet Union.
“Human beings have a basic desire for a measure of freedom, to move around, to do things, to think and create,” says historian Frederick Taylor, author of The Berlin Wall. “And I think you can’t, in the end, suppress it.”