Border and Borderguards incidents, illegal trafic, refugees and others

Rather well documented are borderincidents at the West/east Berlin border and the west-east german border, with an official list still discussing about the complete number..
In the Berlin area in the episode 1961 until 1989 at least 98 refugees were killed, 27 non refugees were killed and 8 borderguards were killed. One was killed while crashing his balloon. At the inner German border at least 50 were killed by guns or violence, and another 33 by mines or other automatic gunsystems.
One German did build a complete airplane in his garage, but was compromised.
Less known is that a small number of Germans were killed by Bulgarian borderguards while trying to escape to Greece.
Hungary played a major role in bringing down the the Iron curtain and thus indirectly GDR, CSSR and possibly Romania too!?

Maintaining the Hungarian-Austrian border became increasingly uneconomical.
The barbed wire and other wire became to rosty and new material was not possible to obtain from USSR, only for western currency. The soviet SZ-100 weak current alarm system caused 4000 false alarms yearly.
So it was decided to dismantle the barbed wire what Hungary started to do so may 2th 1989. Problemes were to be expected with East german tourist in summer time.
The old barbed wire was sold to finance the Hungarian army budget.
In August summer got more hot. A Hungarian general from Ministery of Interior (who?) informed the Commander of Borderguards (who?). Some few hunderd Germans were organising a picknick near the border, if they were to cross the border the higher echelon had nothing against it. The commander did not inform all of his local commanders.
So when dozens of Germans turned up at the borderpost of LtCol Arpad Bella, who was to control that sector with 4 colleges and had six 9mm bullets in his gun, things got complicated. Bella decided not to use deathly force, a total of 600 Germans crossed the border at Sporonkohida August 19th, the first of many to come...

What about Romanian refugees and Romanian borders? what incidents have come to light about refugees or others trying to escape Ceausescus's nightmare.
What equipement was used to guards the border, how was the personel drafted?
Any Romanian borderguards that fled? We learned of course about a yak23 flight and a L-39 but what happened on the ground all these years?
Did illegal soviet KGB agents enter in late 1989? Did Romanians try to escape by boot and sea, across the Danube? What numbers? Is there some monument?
Did historians or journalists or interested start working on these dark facts from history?

They're many attempts to escape, many of them succesfull, you can see bellow a case of a noble woman who escaped in 1952 by boat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Caradja

Between 1949 to 1953 (Stalin's dead), were many skirmishes and fire fights at Romanian - Jugoslavian borders. I talked with one who was in army service at that time.
Many people find their way to escape over this border, Serbs leave them to go westwards. After 1953, when relationship between Ro an Ju were better, Jugoslavians bring back the refugees.

Thanks a lot Contras!

What an interesting biography of Ecaterina Olimpia you share, I had no earlier heared of her very interesting life and whereabouts. Of course the Danube was a possibility to escape, likewise the Odra-neisse (GDRs escaping and drownings to Poland, some where found after opening of the wall), have never heared about te Elbe, but the innercity Berlin canals and river saw enough shootings and drownings.
Wonder if Bulgaria was a favorite neighbour for escaping, read about GDR germans that were caught/shot at the Bulgarian/Greek part of the iron curtain!?
Any hungarian etnic Romanians slipping into Hungary before 1990?
No museum or memorials in connection with such incidents at borders?
No nightly boot landings of western agents on Romanian beaches or into danube delta like they, for example MI6, or US, did in USSR in forties/fifties (Baltic sea)?

My most favorit escape from communist regime was of course the unsuccesfull one of the farmers son a former schuhmaker pupil trying in flight with that helikopter in direction of Snagov.

Myself I "escaped" communist times in but still want my/our december 1989 VHS tape recordings an film-negatives back that were confiscated by Romanian borderguards at a Western border checkpoint near Oradea...

Lots. Hundres, if not thousands. I know a few myself. Many were shot on sight.

Gen. Dénes

About escapings on Hungarian border you must talk with Denes, he knows more than myself.
For Romanians, the Bulgarian route wasn't a solution, because Bulgarians were commies, too. The escape route throgh Bulgaria must to ende in Greece, so it must to cross two comunist borders, that it was quite difficult. But many Romanians, trying to escape, chose this route.
About the secret services landing on Romania, the Delta of danube and other shores were not a real opportunity. They (MI6, CIA, or others) not riskied their agents to slip in Romania. That if they had at their disposition Romanian ethnics who were able and ready to risk their lives to do this job for their country, just to see it escaped for comunism. Maybe it sounds to pathetic, but in 50-60 years, it was the true belief.
MI-6 and CIA don't send their agents, but sended Romanian patriots, eager to do their best to escape their country by comunism.
I'll give you just two examples. If you want more, just ask, and I'll prepare for you more examples.
One of the freedom fighters in Maramures was Vasile Blidaru, who Fought against comunists with his weapon in his hand. He was veteran on the Eastern front in ww2, and an elite shooter. In 1949 he was arrested like "enemy of people", a common acusation in this time. He evaded and becaome partisan, like many others (during this time, were about 1300 armed groups who fights against the comunist regime, the Securitate dossiers says that). He stays in forests in Maramures, near Baita de sub Codru, his village, and had many skirmishings with Securitate troops, he killed many Party members, until 1951, when he crosse the border and escaped. He reached Italy and he was trained in a camp near Trieste. After 3 years, he came back (by paratrooping), in same region, and starts again his war against comunists. He was captured by Securitate by betrayal, jailed and executed.
Another example is one of one group of Romanians who escaped in early 50s and come back later, to help the resistance armed groups in Romanian Mountains. There were many of such groups, and they were idroped by parachoute.
Ion Gavrila Ogoranu, one of the leaders of Fagaras Mountain Group of armed resistance against comunism, tells in his memoires about one of this groups, 4 men, who leaded by captain Sabin Mare, who were captured by Securitate and before that, they tried to reach them. Another team of 4 men was leaded by Saplacan, you can find something about Groupe Saplacan, it apears in some German books about Romanian resistance against comunism (I see one in German, but I cannot read it).
In 1995, I talk to Ion Gavrila Ogoranu and he was convinced that this group, the cpt Sabin Mare one (he knows Sabin Mare before he escaped from Romania), was betrayed before he goes from Occident. He came to me with Kim Philby example, and he believes that there were more, at lower levels, who sells them to Soviets.

I know some people who swimm to the Iugoslavian side of the Danube,or sailed with a small boat.
The ideea was that on the Iugoslavian part there were quite a lot of ethnic romanians.
From the cases I know they offered food,dry cloths (if it was nes.)and a shelter till the authorities came.
After that they were put into a camp and waited there till some country accepted them.
I know about Australia and Canada.
If I'm not mistaken ,there were also cases when people were turned to the Romanian authorities.
A friend of mine,who is now a famous doctor,tried to escape in the late 80's to hungary.
He was arested by hungarian border patrol and hended to the romanians.
In was late 80's and were not treated very bad by the romanians.

A cousin of mine,went to the DDR in August 89,from there he went to Hungary and crossed the border without dificulties,to Austria.All this under the eyes of the Hungarians BP's.LAter that day,he came back to take his girlfriend.When he crossed again to Austria,the Hungarians soldier told him not to cross again the border in any way because he gonna shoot him.It was the same guy as in prev two border crossings.

In the late '80s the Hungarian border guards didn't shoot at people any more.
The border with Austria was actually opened and the barbed wires cut by border guards during the 'Pan-European Picnic', allowing thousands of East Germans (and not only) to cross freely the border. It was the first actual breach in the 'Iron Curtain'.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on January 09, 2010 11:56 am

one of the "best" routes was via Yugoslavia. not necessarily across the Danube. if you knew someone who lived in the villages close to the border, there were guides to get you across. I knew someone whose garden ended right next to the guarded border strip. having lived there many years he knew the locations of all manholes, guards, times they patrolled and so forth.

it was more a problem getting to that village than crossing the border. once you boarded a train from Timisoara to the border you were searched and you had to give a plausible explanation on your business there. there were road filters along every main road, so if they saw someone with a vaslui or ialomita license plate, he would be stopped, searched, checked, everything.

th problem was that if you crossed illegaly, you had to go to prison for about 15 days in Yugoslavia for illegal crossing of the border. as a friend of mine told me, after being released from prison, they were diveded. some would be turned back and some would be handed to the german embassy who arranged for transportation to germany. this was usually the case for ethnic germans but the criteria wasn't all that clear.

a relative of mine had a traffic permit for YU as he lived close to the border. when he decided to leava, all he had to do was board a train to Belgrade. such a permit was however, quite hard to get.

This post has been edited by dead-cat on January 09, 2010 09:23 am

You can find more interesting informations by accessing this link http://s188567700.online.de/CMS/index.php?...d=187&Itemid=47. It presents the defections of romanian military and civil aircraft during the Cold War.

This post has been edited by nerva on August 26, 2010 10:59 am