East Germans Escape Relived

BERLIN — In the summer of 1989, as the winds of change were slowly sweeping away the Iron Curtain, tens of thousands of East Germans fled their oppressive communist regime for a new life of freedom in the west.

Now, 20 years after the Berlin Wall was finally yanked down in a peaceful revolution, two of those desperate refugees relive their fateful journeys, one passing through Hungary, the other through what is now the Czech Republic.

Crammed into their Trabant car en route to Hungary, Gabriela Boenisch, her husband and their two children aged two and four, had no idea they were writing a page in the history books.

As they set out on August 24, 1989, leaving everything they had behind them, they were gripped more by a sense of fear than of fate.

Read entire article here.