Fatal Flight
October 15, 2014The Bulgarian-Greek border: an abandoned barracks and the remnants of a signal fence are all that’s left of a place where the Warsaw Pact and NATO once faced each other down. A former Bulgarian border guard shows author Paul Tutsek a special tree: a tree with human bones nailed to it. When he was still serving, the ex-guard was told they were the bones of a couple from East Germany, shot whilst attempting to escape across the border. Together with DW’s Dieter Roser, Tutsek embarks on a search that awakens many evil spirits.
The Berlin Wall and the inner German border were only part of the impregnable “Iron Curtain" sealing off the countries of the Eastern Bloc. Rumors, wrong maps and ignorance made many East Germans believe the Bulgarian border was less well-protected and dangerous – a sometimes fatal error. Most attempts failed, ending in arrest and two weeks in prison in Sofia before being shipped back to East Germany. But some would-be escapees died in the death strip: they may have got over the border fence but they weren’t in the West yet – the real border was still 1500 meters away. They had merely triggered an alarm signal and alerted the border guards.
The two authors interviewed former Bulgarian border guards, scientists and locals, and trawled archives in Sofia, Veliko Tarnovo and Berlin. Why is this dark chapter of German history so little known? And who are the dead in the woods near Yunak?
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