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Jake Tripoli U S HISTORY RESOURCE Escape from Berl

Step into the shoes of an East Berlin resident and uncover top-secret clues from historical articles to plan your daring escape to the West. Learn, decode, and escape in this immersive Berlin Wall simulation.

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    Escape from Berlin The Berlin Wall divided a city for almost 30 years, separating families and resulting in hundreds of deaths. You will take on the role of an East Berlin resident who must escape to freedom in the West. In order to do so, you must learn four pieces of top-secret information: • The location of the escape • Your contact for the escape • The date and time to meet there • The secret code word to enter To find this information and escape from East Berlin, you first must learn as much as you can about the wall that divides your city. You will read 9 articles to learn about the Wall and those who made successful escapes. These articles are: • Plans for a Wall Around Berlin • The Building of The Berlin Wall • The Death Strip • Checkpoint Charlie • Berlin Wall Graffiti • Escaping in Style with a Convertible • A Hot Air Balloon Escape • Escaping with a Stolen Tank • Digging a Tunnel Into East Berlin After reading each article, you will need to decipher various clues that will lead you to the 4 pieces of information you need to escape. The articles can be completed in any order, but only when you have all the answers decoded can you make your escape by completing the Top Secret Escape Info!

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    Escape from Berlin Directions: Below are links to 9 readings on the Berlin Wall. Each includes 4 questions. Record each response in the spaces below placing one letter in each box. Boxes that are greyed out are either spaces or not used. The letters in the lightly-shaded squares can then be placed in the "Top Secret Escape Information" Box at the end to give you the four pieces of information that you need to escape Berlin. Checkpoint Charlie Location Clue e n g i n e e r s Person Clue e a g 1 e c a f Date & Time Clue 1 9 6 1 Secret Code Clue d i p 1 0 m a t s e

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    Place the letters from the shaded squares into the spaces below to reveal the top-secret information that will help you escape East Berlin! Top Secret Escape information Escape Location K r ■ Contact Person L ■ Date and Time ■ Secret Code Word

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    Plans for a wall Around west Berlin Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev and Walter Ulbricht, one of the founders of East Germany, were close allies. But which of the two men was responsible for the construction of the Berlin Wall? Never had a regime locked up its own population. The border between the two Germanys had been sealed off for some time, but when the Wall went up, the loophole into West Berlin, through which East Germans had been able to flee to West Germany, was also closed. In I960 alone, roughly 200,000 East Germans fled from empty supermarket shelves -- and the Stasi secret police - to West Germany. The two leaders met on August 1, 1961 to discuss ways of stopping the exodus of East Germans through Berlin. Khrushchev had an idea of taking advantage of tensions with the West and laying an "iron ring around Berlin." He pointed out that "many engineers" had already left East Germany, and that something had to be done. Ulbricht was also in favor of walling in the East Germans because, as he said, "there are many issues that cannot be resolved with an open border.' 1 At the meeting, a furious Khrushchev told Ulbricht: "When I attended your party convention two years ago, everything was fine. What happened? You wanted to pull ahead of West Germany by 1961/62." Ulbricht objected. "The population is making demands that cannot be met." He shifted the blame for East Germany's poor economy to his comrades from Poland and Bulgaria, who -- contrary to agreements -- were supplying neither steel nor coal. But most of all, he said, it was the fault of the West German government. Ulbricht claimed they were "preparing an uprising to take place in the fall of 1961." "We will give you one or two weeks to make the necessary economic preparations," Khrushchev told him, ’Then you will convene the parliament and issue the following communique: 'Beginning tomorrow, checkpoints will be erected and transit will be prohibited. Anyone who wishes to cross the border can do so only with the permission of certain authorities of the German Democratic Republic [East Germany].." Khrushchev wanted to convince East Germans that the wall would protect them from Western spies, and he said that the Germans would understand. But even he didn’t appear to believe his own propaganda. When Ulbricht told him that he wanted to bring his economic experts into the loop, Khrushchev advised him otherwise. "You should not explain anything before the introduction of the new border regime. It would only strengthen the flow of people leaving." Source: http://di gitalarchive. wil soncenter.org/document/110206

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