all of these people lost their lives at the berlin wall. risk every 5th of february 1909.

the stuff on t.v. is on and on that must have been stefan hahn caught in chris's mother was informed that chris had been shot we were stunned it was inconceivable to us we were all so young 192021 we didn't think that this kind of thing was still possible in 1909 and 7 artie has to be out of the national nucleus. causes prison as and me chris really liked going to the scene i can imagine that when you're young and you're standing so close to the water that you're able to give your dreams a lot more room to wander and. and that the sun has enough of it out so when he saw pictures of america or heard any kind of coverage about america then he always said he wanted to go there and see this incredibly

vast country he started saying that when he was only 12 he felt that there was so much diversity over there which just wasn't the case in small confined east germany . foot's i think he was 14 or 15 when he repeated this feeling and i told him that i didn't think he would be able to do that because he wouldn't be able to get out of east germany if he said it out that closet and human sat shocked him and he replied by the time i'm grown up everything may have changed he still hoped at that age that the system could change and that he'd have more freedom as an adult of oxnard as one and for fy as i am kind. with all of us will send us in the in school fetishist i don't think he was aware that he was putting his life in danger at best he knew that it was dangerous because he could have been arrested as adults with us money enough to not want to

slice. the couple of hours alone in an informal and for all to swim and the body was so pumped with adrenaline that you weren't scared and that scared to the extent that we considered the outcome that then actually occurred because all the things. inputs to process we just thought ok if they catch us they'll arrest us and we'll be put in jail for a year which will all be quite harmless but neither the jail nor the story's outcome were harmless enough for almost all felt and interest one of those. thoughts in the. am or the 4 i spent 14 years living in the vicinity of the wall funnily enough i was unable to sleep although i was tired.

as the civil rights ones who must have been half past 11 at night when i heard the shots from the points of view there were lots of shots and it made me flinch but then i went back to. that and try to forget about it. and don't get it. straight to sit and think. the next day i heard the 1st news announcements wanted the meeting they had all. this and was shocked and horrified but at that time i had no idea that my own son had been the victim. this is in england some quite. 5th of february 1909 midnight a message from mr milkha prevention of an attack on the border to west berlin the

border guards of regiment 33 fired 22 warning shots and shots on target. close when the top. chris had been hit we stopped moving him once and he is going to. provide him through for whom we weren't trying to escape any more at that moment i was hit by a bullet. d.m.o. he would be found in the home lot so i wasn't really that aware of it when you feel as well i felt that i'd been hit but i didn't feel any pain when on the phone. when i was younger and lined when the border guards surrounded us with their weapons drawn and so on location tiles are in the pits on the off and. they threw us into a ditch until some cars arrived and then go on the wall. so the hell to school.

6th of february 989415 am one of the injured men has died the actions taken by the border police have been evaluated as being proper and decisive the names of the individuals who attempted to cross the border are to be struck from the hospital admissions register. across other if you're one in prison always had a smile on his face he was vibrations and determined when he wanted to do something he wanted to do it he was very emotional and questioning. him at sanaa the marquis or and on and on and on and on and i thought he didn't just put up with things the way they were i think had me smits that things if we knew if he thought they should stop he spoke his mind and asked many questions and and feel

a fungus to it. and chris was very restless and i never knew what he did with all his energy and he was a noisy baby and very spirited he had a real thirst for knowledge he was very demanding. there was one instance in school where chris was in trouble because he'd beaten someone up unfortunately national and perhaps aggravate because he did that quite a few times in years one and 2 before he went to the sports school want to take on . business and government is coming i got a call so i went to the school me yesterday when i got there i told him that i

didn't want him fighting with the boys with these words that he told me he had to do it on one of the boys was fat and wore thick glasses and was that guy that at the concert ticket and everyone was laughing at him so that this boy was crying but that he and chris beat up the boys who were laughing and he liked doing that he was a wild child yeah. point of the gun. our friendship began straight away and year one. begun and that's when we started doing gymnastics together in school he was also from the johana style district and. he was the only one who lived in the same district as me so we had the same grade school we got on well together possum for them.

it was it's was almost or we knew we'd go to boarding school together we were fans of dynamo berlin they had a great genesis they were number one in east germany so that was a goal for us we were really proud and. it's not much on. the ball when i remember the sports bags we got with the 1st badges saying dynamo on the body. that was what i want to focus but these are tough shit. when we were out in berlin with this bag we thought that other people would see that and think that we were great journalists or and the. few that i although that was our goal for 3 years we were serious about it being a top class gymnast could change your whole life as a last up in one by one your fits into an all black.

flies the feathers on top and now has a car i remember him coming home at the weekends it was unbelievable his hands were so sore he had blisters and the skin was peeling off he always took a bath and cut off the blistering skin we tried to patch him up at the weekends funnily enough the children thought that was normal they didn't feel they were being put under too much pressure there were only a few times after he'd been shouted at to do it again that he put his foot down and said no i don't want you anymore it's no fun like this with with that and all kinds .

except in the interest of fine made the decision to take chris out of the sports school because i knew he'd never become a world champion i told chris it was more likely that they'd break his back than that he'd get on to the podium the softest and the best so i said he was too stubborn to make it and he didn't want to hear it. when i think i think it took 2 or 3 months and then he said to me fine i won't go there anymore but what will i do now all of us marshals. you know. with gforth trained waiter chris get friday i remember the 1st day

of his internship and chris was standing in the office area that was the area between the kitchen then the guest room and crucially and. gusts of all in them on through he stood there in his suit as if he'd been wearing it day and night for years with the guns and he was confident elegant and quick as he did his job. it was very impressive chris and i were both very happy about this job because in the days of east germany becoming a trained waiter was a privilege but it guns guns fish instead and if hock to duty outside and all with privy to get this as an issue it wasn't a highly regarded job but you had the chance to earn a lot of money even as a young person and vaio and x. all the time and. to close

a cotton are all whites if you give us the old congress worked in a bar that had many visitors from the west there were tourists for them these german money wasn't worth much so they gave a lot of tips if you tweet it so if you notice all smiles and far. in many restaurants it was an advantage if you could win over guests to be your allies they were quite liberal with the east german money that they exchanged $10.00 to $1.00 of them since owens but almost. all scandal has local mcdonald's and that's how you could easily earn a few 100 marks a day. or 2 who call up mark from. those cops whom object of your height but you know there were evenings when we went for a walk in berlin sometimes we'd walk through the central district and that always made us pensive because we could see the wall of the skins could be neo-con and on

compared to not it was right there crisp oak very much about how he perceived the system out of the if you pull him out of the washboard he also talked about how he couldn't serve in the national people's army because he didn't want a political career on the invoice we had lots in common and gotten to the mines on peyton and he's on the only 4th us the 4 i was i asked him what his plan was if i didn't want to get him to confess that he had plans to flee or anything like that he sort of stared into the distance and said i can't say that right now but things can't stay the same. he said i could smell my desire chris said the same thing to me once why don't we leave i told him why should we leave i have everything i need here i have a job i have a flat he shouted at me there must be more to life than that a small bank account a flat a job that's not enough help this i suppose or so there's a sort. of research on just in the end i had

no real idea about how he felt i'd have kept a much closer eye on him had i known but i didn't. biceps that city. 7th of february $989.00 police headquarters. operation turner is being initiated to monitor a car and get those environs as well as to prevent information getting through to the western press it is therefore been decided to summon giffords mother for the purpose of intimidation. so moves that that on coming went by and 10 minutes later someone came in a relatively tall man in a blue uniform highly decorated he introduced himself i forget his rank but i think his surname was kruger so he told me without hesitation mrs gaffer i we would like to inform you that your son committed an attack on

a military object and has died do you need a doctor if that's when everything changed that would suck but then the others. i started screaming and really lost the plot but they got such a fright because they weren't expecting that reaction i kept screaming you murdered him he was only 20 he didn't do anything i was so powerless i was completely in their hands there was nothing i could do but they did this to my child and all i could do was scream in silence i couldn't run through the streets screaming they'd have stuck me in a mental hospital straight away i think i had the sense of helplessness for a good 6 weeks always 6 o'clock it was the last we knew that cotton had been threatened we tried to support her and be there for her but we wanted to hear her story that she had terrible things to say about what had happened to her and how the authorities had treated her with the east german papers announced that there

hadn't been an order to shoot so that nobody had been shot side but we knew he'd been shot and still it was denied we immediately knew that the state wanted to shut us up and sweep this whole affair under the carpet they didn't want anybody to know that someone had been shot at the wall it doesn't enter into to see madonna marshals have on us. 24th of february 989 police headquarters kibo stossel quick scan for his funeral must be prepared with the goal of preventing anybody from abusing the ceremony to commit provocative actions against the state leadership extensive security measures around current governor i have not been able to prevent the leaking of conspiratorial information from going for social circle to western newspapers. or to the protest in all the mood so hard on them it's not what i thought it was

a silent protest to have the courage and say we have to put a notice of his death in the papers it was denied that anybody had been shot down the system refused to acknowledge it so we did it and we went in there stuck together in this and it's the us consulate and tonight's column we thought we could only say it was a tragic accident and we wanted to give the day it was a small protest sign up or test us wunderkinds protests blood. on it was not all we knew that efforts had been made for the media to attend the funeral that was the small contribution we were able to make and that's when i took us. by the full. body would often be able to walk all the while we were under constant

surveillance at the funeral everywhere the officers were stationed in the cemetery side alleys and by the graves as these german citizens we knew that things like that went on but we've not been affected personally for those of. us yet on the to the museum of the total of the mods cognition you know we always perceived it to be tragic. the system hammered into us that this was the border between 2 fundamentally different systems and the border was hostile so people who did what chris did could end up the way chris ended up. wouldn't. it was dreadful this is final and sets and what he saw done diesel cars as state presence was the final straw i knew i couldn't live in this place. it was a police state a dictatorship as is pretty tight does this not picked up well. the 24th

of february 1989 it is further ordered that the political damage must be contained by all available means use of an informer against the young adults and disciplining of christopher or his mother. if. sometimes i was at the police station for 6 or 7 hours i had lost all sense of time the only way i knew how much time had passed was from the clock on the town hall i couldn't even remember properly what they'd asked and what i'd said they just wouldn't stop talking to his kind of whom. view of all the more we go for along the gulf because places we were brought in for questioning several times they came to my home to question me some more they followed me around for 3 weeks they came to the funeral and then always stood outside the shop but the 2 gentlemen sat inside there when i left the house in the morning they followed me on day 3 i started saying good morning to them. before they said good morning back.

of the homes if if they didn't try and hide it was very open to the followed me home again. they followed me wherever i went like that i was just starting up the career ladder and had a leading position. like water off playing in ice and i don't pull it was made very clear to me that it didn't matter how the situation ended my career was over the only job i'd ever get in my life was a stagehand as you know what all. i know and the father in then i remember one trip i took in a tram it was packed full with boys with rucksacks and suitcases they were all very jolly there was something in each one of their faces that reminded me of chris i

started crying i couldn't control myself i wanted to but i couldn't the whole tram went quiet as i stood there wondering what i was going to do to what extent the hold up because that's what i think it's time to leave i couldn't explain to them. chris was dead i was embarrassed mr said it was tough so i wasn't allowed to say in this state what had happened and that was very painful i got out and felt numb. stuff that goes it's a tart things 3 i asked myself what i was doing in a country like that i went to the police station and got myself together and decided i will talk with us and that was the day they told me that their investigations were completed and that the state had acted properly and that i should never say again that he had been murdered. one of them added you yourself

said chris was like a little wild horse what do you do with wild horses if they don't let you catch them so i looked at him and said you just shoot them he nodded that's when i woke up and knew that i had to leave i couldn't breathe anymore i didn't want to live there any longer think of a study and really if i thought. she was up until then she didn't know about her son's death a special commission informed her that her son committed an attack on a military object carrying get froyo would be questioned here for weeks and. this until you would go to. their young they never experienced the wall they were born a lot later that their parents often don't tell them much. many of them come from southern germany and sweden they just want to know about chris and me and about east germany what is it like to live in a dictatorship how do you behave. i think it's great that i'm allowed to do this

and that i'm invited to tell my stories. like i've been he says sometimes i'm surprised myself that i've managed this it has worked i always remember chris's words about how there had to be more to life you can always make a fresh start and i know now that he was right you can make a fresh start with kindness.

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on the road with our superheroes my mission is clear. to me closely should explore germany. they dug him and check everything out there's a lot going on in our local. pub germany tried and tested. w . welcome to the what is the game here for discussion. place to talk about a. list of countries that's holding up. so you don't want. good. place. to chill but

it. sure links to news from africa and the world your link to exceptional stories and discussion on use of these events and i would say d.w. comes to us because join us on facebook. for. the flame. place amazing natural landscapes in iceland this is where i spent my latest perfect weekend for your imax oh find out more about that later on in the show.