Tunnel 29 - Ep 5. The Trap
Intrigue
BBC
4.6 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2019
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“We had no chance to be together.” The diggers hatch a new plan, unaware the Stasi are onto them.
Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Helena Merriman tells the extraordinary true story of a man who dug a tunnel into the East, right under the feet of border guards, to help friends, family and strangers escape. The series is based on original interviews with the survivors as well as thousands of documents from the Stasi archives and recordings from the tunnel.
Producer & Presenter: Helena Merriman Sound Design: Eloise Whitmore Translation and additional research: Sabine Schereck Editor: Richard Knight Joachim Rudolph's original interviews voiced by Mark Edel Hunt
#tunnel29
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Fladiated. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:25.0 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. As we dug, we knew that at any time the ground above our heads could suddenly be ripped open. |
| 0:57.0 | I voluntarily consent to actively support the security forces of the GDR and their righteous fight. |
| 1:04.8 | But now the water was actually dripping into the tunnel until it was flowing in. From BBC Radio 4, this is Tunnel 29. I'm Helena Merriman. |
| 1:18.6 | Chapter 5 The Trap. It's now July and the wall's been up for almost a year. |
| 1:28.0 | In the east, the streets right next to the wall are quiet. |
| 1:32.0 | The house is empty except for the rats and barbed wire hangs |
| 1:36.0 | from chimney to chimney like Christmas decorations. Every so often though, the streets next |
| 1:41.3 | to the wall get bursts of life. |
| 1:43.2 | There are the protests when people in the West come to the wall and shouting to the East. |
| 1:54.4 | Then there are the songs which separated lovers play to each other over the wall. |
| 2:03.0 | And then there are the fans which drive up to the wall on both sides of the border. |
| 2:11.0 | They've got loudspeakers on the top of them and they play music |
| 2:14.7 | and propaganda at each other. And all this time through the protests, the loudspeaker walls, the escapes, the wall itself has changed. |
| 2:31.0 | There are now tripwires, landmines, electric fences, spikes, |
| 2:36.0 | and should these fail to stop an escapee, the Vopo's, the border guards, are |
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