Tunnel 29 - Ep 9. The Signal
Intrigue
BBC
4.6 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2019
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“If you don’t have a coffee, then bring me a cognac.” Ellen's plan is derailed.
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 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, |
| 0:33.1 | find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:38.1 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. So the next morning I went to meet me move and I said okay I'll do it. We growled all the way to the end of the tunnel. |
| 1:05.0 | The signal was for me to buy a box of matches. I kept one hand in my pocket. |
| 1:11.0 | Inside it was my gun. And then I ended up on Swinhorsachhass. And I knew this was a street that the tunnel was right under. And I started walking towards it. |
| 1:29.0 | From BBC Radio 4, this is Tunnel 29, I am Helena Merriman. Chapter 9, The Signal. |
| 1:37.5 | It's now around 6 in the evening and everything is happening on just a few streets on either |
| 1:41.8 | side of the wall. |
| 1:46.0 | In the east, groups of escapees are sitting in pubs, waiting for Ellen to come and give the signal. |
| 1:51.0 | She's got the message through to one group when she bought the matches, but now |
| 1:54.9 | she's got two more pubs to get to. Just a few streets away from them underground, there's |
| 2:00.1 | Joachim and Haso, and they're ready to bring the escapees through the tunnel into the west. |
| 2:05.2 | And on the other side of the wall in the west, you've got the NBC camera crew who are watching |
| 2:09.5 | everything that's happening from the top of an apartment block. |
| 2:12.6 | And they've just seen Ellen walk into the building |
| 2:14.9 | that the tunnel is under. |
... |
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