On October 18, 1961, construction workers were monitored as they bricked up the windows of the building at Bernauer Straße 44. The fiancee of the construction worker Norbert Raasch lived in the West. When nobody was looking, he seized the moment and jumped out the firstfloor window onto the sidewalk on the west side. His supervisor had suspected that he was planning to flee, but chose not to report it to the border guards. The escape did not become known until the end of the workday when Raasch could not be found. The brigadier was brought to police headquarters at Alexanderplatz and interrogated the entire night. He was released the next morning and did not suffer any further sanctions.