Incident

A 304

On October 26, 1962, two young men in their early twenties managed to flee over the Wall at the Sophien parish cemetery. They approached the border fortifications in the dark, taking advantage of the unclear cemetery grounds. The border guards at Ackerstrasse 42 first noticed them just as they swung themselves onto the Wall from a coil of barbed wire. Both guards opened fire and one of the fugitives was probably injured on his hand. One bullet went into the porter’s lodge of the Lazarus Hospital. The fugitives made it to West Berlin.