The thought of leaving Romania already
occurred to me when I was about 14 years old. I
had finished studying auto electrics at
technical college in Klausenburg, where I was
also able to take my driving test in the spring
of 1976 when I was 17. However, my driving
license was only given to me after my 18th
birthday. Now my goal was slowly drawing closer.
From July 1976 I worked in the commercial
vehicle workshop in Temeschburg where I soon got
to know other like-minded people. These were
also people of Hungarian, as well as Romanian,
ethnic origins.
One day in the autumn of 1976 my uncle,
Johann Schuch, was waiting for me at Temeschburg
railway station and he told me that he and his
family had received their exit permits. After
this news, and knowing the trouble my own
parents had gone to in trying to get an exit
permit, I had only one thought: Escape! But how?
Before the Schuch family left the country, I
took over their car. With this, I was a lot
nearer my goal. Now I could move around freely
and I tried to establish contact with people who
lived in the villages along the Yugoslavian
border.
In April 1977 I got to know a 17-year-old
Hungarian boy from Cruceni who had the same
intention as I had. I visited his home often and
we hatched plans for the escape. By now, I was
known to the police sentry at the edge of the
village and so I could move around freely in the
area. On one recce (surveillance trip), we were
caught by a border guard and taken to the police
station, but were soon rescued by my friend’s
father through him knowing the right people.
At the beginning of July 1977 I was invited
to a celebration in Kleinjetscha where I got to
know Walter Isler. Within a short time we got
onto this subject again and we were both
frantically looking for ways to escape. To my
astonishment, Walter came up with an almost
feasible plan which involved another two
Romanians from Kleinbetschkerek. What was
missing from the escape plan to make it work was
me with my car, and escape aides in Yugoslavia,
as at that time the Yugoslavs deported illegal
border crossers back to Romania. The most
important person in the plan was one of the
Romanians who had done his military service as a
border guard and had only just finished a month
ago. He assured us that he knew the border at
Neratal like the back of his own hand. In order
not to lose this opportunity, Walter and I
decided on that same Saturday evening to start
already on the following Thursday. So we only
had five days left and still had to find someone
who could help us further in Yugoslavia. I had
my doubts about it, and with good reason, for
when the calendar came around to Wednesday, and
nothing had yet been fixed, our chances seemed
hopeless. On that Wednesday afternoon, all four
of us met in the Restaurant Cina in Temeschburg
and went through everything again. We decided on
a new deadline for early on Sunday morning. I
went to work by train, as usual, on the last
day.
On Saturday morning Walter suddenly
appeared on the train. He seemed quite nervous
and thought it was our last chance of finding an
escape aide. I excused myself from work through
Walter Helberg and went off with the other
Walter. For a while we wandered aimlessly around
the town until we came to the Hotel Continental
bar. Suddenly, a colored guy came up to us and
held out his hand to Walter. He was an African
student whom Walter knew and he was our last
hope. After a short conversation he agreed as he
apparently needed the money and had a car. We
settled on a price of 5,000 Lei per head, but as
the two Romanians had no money, Walter an I both
had to cough up 10,000 Lei each. Half the money
was to be handed over before, and the other half
after the successful escape. Now I had another
problem, for I couldn’t let my parents know of
my intention, but within eight hours we had to
hand over the first 10,000 Lei. Determined,
Walter and I drove to my grandfather’s in
Temeschburg, presented him with our plan and
asked him for 5,000 Lei. He stood up without a
word, searched in a cupboard and counted out the
requested sum on the table. He had tears in his
eyes as we left. Then we drove on to
Kleinjetscha to Walter’s home. As his mother had
been told everything, Walter received 5,000 Lei,
too. We said goodbye and rode back to
Temeschburg on the public service bus. There, we
met up again with the two Romanians, showed them
the money and decided on departure times for
Sunday. Walter gave the student the agreed sum
on the same evening. I went home by train as
usual and tried not to draw attention to myself.
When I got home I said I had to work on Sunday
morning in the repair shop and was then going to
Jahrmarkt for the Kirchweih celebrations and
wouldn’t be coming home until Tuesday.
Kitted out with a second pair of trousers
and a shirt, I set off on Sunday 11th July 1977
at around 7 a.m. My father opened the gate of
the yard for me, I gave a quick wave, put my
foot on the gas and was away. The two Romanians
were waiting for me on the main road in
Kleinbetschkerek and from there we went to
Walter’s apartment in Temeschburg. Walter had
his belongings in a carrier bag. Amongst them
was an old telescope from the Second World War,
a compass and a map. Around 10 a.m. we left
Temeschburg and headed towards Reschitza. It was
about 2 p.m. when we saw the first check point
on a main road beyond Reschitza in the Sasca-Montana
direction. Was it luck or coincidence? We
weren’t stopped there. After that, we left the
main road and drove through fields and woods.
When we arrived in Neratal, we looked for a
suitable hiding place to hide the car. From then
on, we went by foot. Our first aim was to reach
the river and to follow it along as far as the
border. We set off and after only a short time
we reached the Nera. Dusk began to fall as we
stood helplessly on the river bank, having
realized that we’d left the compass back in the
car. It soon became obvious that we wouldn’t
make the border that night. So as not to be
discovered by anyone, we crossed the water
shortly before nightfall and hid in the woods.
At dawn next day we carried on along the other
side of the river. When it grew really light and
we could no longer walk along the river bank, we
moved away from the water. Suddenly, the sky
began to darken and it began to rain. Soaked to
the skin, we realised just before midday that we
had been walking in the wrong direction for the
past three or four hours. Our border guard stood
there, helpless, and tried to find some clue.
Now we had to go back the way we had come. It
was a rotten feeling. We changed our wet clothes
for dry ones, ate our last piece of chocolate
and then hurried back.
We didn’t find the same route back and came
instead to a main road. Once we had crossed over
and gone on a few hundred yards, our border
guard discovered the first clue. We could see
the river again, too. Our mood brightened. By
now it was four o’clock on Monday afternoon.
We’d had our last proper meal on Sunday
lunchtime. After walking for another two or
three hours, we could see the observation
towers. Now we had to wait for dusk as after a
certain time, which our border guard knew, the
guards left the tower. With dusk approaching, we
steered a course between the two towers, nearing
the border at the same time. There were no dogs
at that part of the border.
When darkness fell, two border guards
patrolled a stretch of about 500 yards. As the
area was slightly hilly, and wasn’t a straight
line either, the soldiers couldn’t keep a
constant eye on the whole stretch. We slowly
crept on and grew closer to the stretch of
gravel road patrolled by the guards. By 11 p.m.
we were only about 20 yards away from the patrol
men. We could hear their footsteps quite clearly
and checked our watches to see how long they
could be heard for, in order to ascertain at
what point they changed direction. It was a
moonlit night and so not very favorable for us.
We communicated with each other by sign language
only and put our trust in our border guard.
Motionless, we lay in the fairly high grass as
it began to grow dark and then to rain.
Suddenly, our border guard stood up and waved to
us and we followed in an almost upright
position. First across the gravel road, then a
strip of meadow where two or three rows of trip
wires were set up and which triggered off flares
if anyone got caught on them, and then we
followed a strip of ploughed land about 20 or 30
yards wide. Now we could see the barbed wire
fence which we could slip through quite
effortlessly. Beyond the fence there was only a
narrow strip of meadow and then bushes which we
could quickly crawl under. By now we were most
probably on Yugoslavian soil.
We could already hear the sound of the
River Nera which we had to cross in order not to
end up back in Romania. As we reached the
river’s edge it stopped raining, but we were
already soaked to the skin. I had packed our
personal papers well in a small bag tied to my
body and so we crossed the Nera fully clothed.
On reaching the other side of the river we were
faced with a new orientation problem. The
Yugoslavs had switched off the street lighting
after midnight, so we couldn’t see the road
where we had arranged to meet our escape helpers
in the dark. It was awful. Our first feeling of
elation had quickly evaporated.
In the meantime it was now about one
o’clock and time was pressing as our escape
helpers could only wait for us between 2 and 4
a.m. on the pre-arranged three kilometer stretch
of road. We hurried on through a cornfield until
we suddenly found ourselves in the yard of a
house. Two dogs discovered us and gave chase. In
spite of this, we could only pray that the road
bordered onto a village and that we’d now
reached this. We ran away from the dogs as fast
as we could in tractor tracks full of water
until the dogs gave up. We were now already
quite a distance from the houses when we saw a
vehicle on a road just a few hundred yards away
from us.
It was about 2.30 a.m. when we reached the
road. When the headlamps lit up again we first
jumped into the ditch for it could have been
someone else other than our escape vehicle. On
passing, we couldn’t exactly tell if it was our
escape helpers but we had a good feeling about
it. When the vehicle headlamps flashed again a
few minutes later from the direction the vehicle
had previously been traveling in, we made
ourselves visible. It was our escape aides. We
were elated, for now we were going to Belgrade.
During the journey our helpers told us that
we couldn’t drive in the town at night as the
police carried out vehicle checks on all the
roads leading into town. So we stopped about 40
kilometers (25 miles) before Belgrade and waited
in the vehicle until daybreak. Our clothes
slowly began to dry out.
On July 12th 1977, at around 6.50 a.m.
(according to our watches), we drove to the
German embassy. Unshaven, tired and fairly
dirty, we wanted to get into the embassy around
7 a.m. As the Yugoslav sentry held out his
watch, which read 6 a.m., we realized that in
all the hectic rush no-one had thought to change
their watch. Now we had another hour of waiting
impatiently in our helpers’ car in front of the
embassy. During this time, I wrote three lines
on a serviette and handed over a memento (my
wallet) for my parents to our escape helpers so
that they, too, would get the remaining promised
5,000 Lei in Alexanderhausen.
We’d got this far. We said goodbye to our
honest escape helpers, whose names we did not
know, and went into the embassy. We briefly
explained where we had come from and were then
quickly led to a room where we were questioned
further. To our regret, the two Romanians had to
leave the embassy as quickly as possible. This
action by the embassy came as a heavy blow to
us. Walter and I gave the officials our entry
numbers which we had learned by heart and which
could be checked in our presence by a phone call
to Cologne. Then our position was clarified and
we were told we would receive a passport and
money to enable us to travel on to Germany.
The two Romanians were still standing in
front of the building, shattered. We went with
them to the American, Canadian and Italian
embassies but no-one was prepared to take them.
And so we parted in Belgrade.
Around 9 p.m. Walter and I left Belgrade
for Munich with replacement passports for German
citizens in which the place of birth and names
were changed. We had to leave our other identity
papers at the embassy. With mixed feelings we
reached Munich central station at around 11 a.m.
on July 13th, where we sent a telegram, ‘Arrived
safely in Munich’.
We first went to the Hehn family in Munich
(relatives from Billed) where we could
recuperate for two days and were given clean
clothing and some money. On July 15th we headed
for Nuremberg and the reception centre for
immigrants.
On my first contact with Alexanderhausen I
learned that the two Romanians had been captured
in Yugoslavia and sent back to Romania. Before
our telegram had reached Alexanderhausen, our
two escape aides called on our parents, took the
money and disappeared.
In the summer of 1978 the embassy got in
touch with me to say that the two Romanians had
escaped from Romania again in the same area. As
Yugoslavia had in the meantime changed its
attitude towards Romania and no longer sent
escapees back, the two reached Chicago in the
USA, unharmed, where I assume they still live
today.
