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Fatal Flight

October 15, 2014

Authors Paul Tutsek and Dieter Roser’s nightmarish investigation begins with human bones hanging on a tree on the Bulgarian-Greek border. Who are the dead in the wooded area near Yunak?

https://p.dw.com/p/1DVa3

Fatal flight

The Bulgarian-Greek border: an abandoned barracks and the remnants of a signal fence are all that’s left of a place where the Warsaw Pact and NATO once faced each other down. A former Bulgarian border guard shows author Paul Tutsek a special tree: a tree with human bones nailed to it. When he was still serving, the ex-guard was told they were the bones of a couple from East Germany, shot whilst attempting to escape across the border. Together with DW’s Dieter Roser, Tutsek embarks on a search that awakens many evil spirits.

13.10.2104 DW Dokumentationen Ende einer Flucht Kaserne
The former signal fence was over a kilometer from the actual border with Greece. Although the frontier was tightly sealed, East Germans fell for rumors that it was an easy way to escape to the West.

The Berlin Wall and the inner German border were only part of the impregnable “Iron Curtain" sealing off the countries of the Eastern Bloc. Rumors, wrong maps and ignorance made ​​many East Germans believe the Bulgarian border was less well-protected and dangerous – a sometimes fatal error. Most attempts failed, ending in arrest and two weeks in prison in Sofia before being shipped back to East Germany. But some would-be escapees died in the death strip: they may have got over the border fence but they weren’t in the West yet – the real border was still 1500 meters away. They had merely triggered an alarm signal and alerted the border guards.

13.10.2104 DW Dokumentationen Ende einer Flucht Kaserne
The old barracks of the Bulgarian border troops, about two kilometers from the tree where the bones are.

The two authors interviewed former Bulgarian border guards, scientists and locals, and trawled archives in Sofia, Veliko Tarnovo and Berlin. Why is this dark chapter of German history so little known? And who are the dead in the woods near Yunak?

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