"13. August 1961 in Berlin. An der Bernauer Straße"

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Picture 11: This scene took place in Berlin in a side street off "Bernauer Straße" on 13th August 1961. Bernauer Straße became notorious in connection with the Berlin Wall, since the border ran between the houses and the pavement in front of them. During the first days after 13th August, dramatic scenes took place here: people jumped out of windows into safety blankets held by the West Berlin fire brigade. Soon afterwards, East German authorities had the windows bricked up, the houses vacated and eventually pulled down. The stumps of the houses served as sadly eloquent fundaments of the Wall well into the 1970s, before a new concrete wall was put up. The house in this picture, for example, later had to give way to the so-called „death strip“.
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