65th Anniversary of the Construction of the Berlin Wall   “I stood before the barbed wire, no longer able to make sense of the world”

On 13 August 1961, when construction of the Berlin Wall began, the lives of millions of people in Germany changed overnight. Rainer Just and Michael ‘Micha’ Synowzik recall how they experienced that day as children – and explain why they continue to share their stories to this day.
 

After World War II, the victorious Allied powers divided Germany into four occupation zones, from which two German states emerged in 1949: the Federal Republic of Germany in the West and the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the East. Berlin, located within East German territory, was also divided – into a Soviet sector and three Western sectors, which together formed West Berlin. For years, the border between the two halves of the city remained open: people commuted to work, visited family and went to the cinema – on both sides. By 1961, around 2.7 million people had decided to leave East Germany through this open route. Because so many people were migrating – including an increasing number of doctors, engineers and skilled workers – the East German leadership came under growing pressure. The loss of these skilled professionals threatened the country’s economic foundation.

“Nobody intends to build a wall”

When Walter Ulbricht, leader of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), East Germany’s ruling party, uttered the now-famous words: “Nobody intends to build a wall,” on 15 June 1961, schoolboys Rainer Just and Michael “Micha” Synowzik were enjoying the Berlin summer, completely unaware of what was about to happen. But it was a lie – the SED was planning to do precisely that. After World War II, Germany was politically divided into two states, and Berlin was also split into eastern and western sections. On 13 August 1961, the socialist regime began erecting what was to become a 155-kilometre-long wall around West Berlin, permanently isolating the city. Its purpose was to prevent people from fleeing from the East. One-sixth of the GDR’s population managed to escaped the socialist dictatorship before the Wall was built.

The summer of 1961 was a particularly tense time politically. Rainer Just and Micha Synowzik spent that summer in East Berlin: Just was visiting his grandparents there from West Berlin, while Synowzik had grown up there with his father and brother. Today, exactly 65 years later, both continue to share their experiences as eyewitnesses, speaking with young people about their memories and the consequences of Germany’s division.
“East Berlin was a world of its own,” recalls Just of his childhood in the divided city. His grandmother had a garden not far from Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, the central remand facility of the GDR’s Ministry for State Security, which now houses the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial. On their way to the garden, they had to walk along the prison wall. Guards were stationed at every corner, and Rainer’s grandmother pointed them out to him. He can still recall seeing prisoner transports arriving at the prison.

The night that changed Berlin

When the borders were closed on 13 August 1961, the boy suddenly found himself stranded in East Berlin, separated from his parents. He spent the entire day glued to the radio, following every word in the news. “Little by little, they closed the border,” Rainer Just recalls of that terrifying day. “I was really scared.” It took around seven days before his mother was able to pick him up from East Berlin. He was relieved when she was allowed to cross the border at the Friedrichstrasse checkpoint. At last, he was back home and free. A few kilometres away, 13-year-old Micha Synowzik also experienced the construction of the Wall firsthand. He still has vivid memories of 13 August 1961. That week, he was staying with other children and teenagers at a Young Pioneers’ camp by a lake near Berlin. Among other things, the children were taught how to handle rifles and hand grenades. At around 8 pm, a Young Pioneers’ leader ordered the children to hand over their transistor radios. Without any explanation, they were told to return to their tents and stay there for the rest of the night. However, Micha Synowzik’s friend had packed two radios. “Something’s going on in Berlin, Micha,” his friend Jürgen whispered to him. The next morning, Micha and his friends saw the tense expressions on the faces of the Young Pioneers’ leaders – a sight that has stayed with him to this day.

“I stood before the barbed wire, no longer able to make sense of the world”

The camp was cut short after breakfast, and Micha and the other children took down their tents. When the group arrived back in Berlin, their parents knew nothing about the camp ending early. So Micha set off for home on his own. On his way there, he came across armed company brigade groups – an East German paramilitary force of the ruling party – and out of curiosity, he followed them. It was then that he encountered the Berlin Wall for the first time.

“I stood before the barbed wire, no longer able to make sense of the world,” Synowzik recalls. Instead of an open city, he saw barbed wire, armed guards and blocked roads. A border guard shouted at him: “There’s nothing to see here! Get out of here!” For the 13-year-old schoolboy, it was a sight that left him speechless: “There were armed guards everywhere, barbed wire – you couldn’t go anywhere anymore.” It was only later, when he watched television reports about the tightening of the border, that he realised the full impact this would have on his family. The new border meant that Micha’s father lost his side job in West Berlin, which had provided the family with additional income. The route to the Synowzik family’s three allotment gardens also became much more complicated because of the sealed-off border. Until then, the family had earned some extra cash by selling the fruit and vegetables they grew there. Now, the journey there and back took around three hours. “All our privileges suddenly disappeared,” he says. But that wasn’t the hardest part for the 13-year-old. “I was really distressed at the time,” Synowzik remembers. “I was cut off from people who were close to me.” He could no longer visit a beloved aunt who was a teacher and had taught him to read. “My family’s social life fell apart,” recalls the now 78-year-old.
“You came across the Wall or barbed wire wherever you went,” Synowzik says, describing life in East Berlin afterwards. His world grew smaller and smaller. When a valve on his bicycle broke, he could no longer find a replacement. Before the Wall was built, he could cycle all over Berlin and had enjoyed a real sense of freedom. Now the bike was useless.

Escape through the sewers

Less than three months later, his life took another turn. While West Berliner Rainer Just was able to leave the city without any major problems when the Wall was first built, life behind the Wall became more and more difficult for the Synowzik family.
After Micha’s brother had escaped to the West, the Synowzik family came under the scrutiny of the Stasi. Micha and his father also decided to flee. After three failed attempts, they finally managed to escape to the West through Berlin’s sewer system. Shortly afterwards, this escape route was closed.
The construction of the Wall on 13 August became a turning point in the lives of Rainer Just and Micha Synowzik. Rainer Just did not see his grandparents for years, and later only sporadically. The rare family reunions were overshadowed by sadness over their forced separation. His grandparents died a few years later – behind the Wall. Nevertheless, Just continued to travel regularly to East Germany. The Wall never let him go. Today, he speaks as an eyewitness about his experiences in East Berlin. For Michael Synowzik, a new life of freedom began in West Germany after his escape. However, the escape tore his family apart, and he experienced discrimination at school for being a refugee. For 20 years, he did not speak publicly about his experiences. Both were lucky; many others were not. At least 140 people were killed trying to cross the Berlin Wall, and the Berlin Wall Foundation estimates that around 650 people lost their lives along the entire East-West border. Right up until the socialist regime collapsed in 1989, the government continued to strengthen the border fortifications. Then, 28 years after it was built, the Wall fell on 9 November 1989. Images from that day remain a symbol of German reunification.

Keeping memories alive

Rainer Just has also never been able to let go of the past. In the mid-1980s, he was sitting in a cinema when the opening scene of a film triggered a flood of memories. “I experienced it exactly like in the film,” he recalls. Memories of East Berlin started to come back, “like a mosaic”. Since then, Just has taken a deeper interest in the history of East and West Germany. For many years, he campaigned for the establishment of the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse. The various sites that make up the Memorial attract countless visitors every year, 60 percent of them from abroad. Twenty-five percent have an East German background. Eventually, Synowzik also began to examine his own story. He researched his escape route and wrote the book Oktober 1961: Meine Flucht durch die Berliner Kanalisation: am Checkpoint Charlie (October 1961: My Escape Through the Berlin Sewer System: at Checkpoint Charlie). Together with the Berlin Wall Foundation, he also worked on the interactive messenger project “A Message from Micha”, which offers insights into his story and his escape from East to West Berlin through the sewer system.

Sixty-five years after the construction of the Wall, Rainer Just is 73 years old and Michael Synowzik is 78. To this day, both men are committed to sharing their firsthand experiences and keeping the memory of the Berlin Wall and its consequences alive.

August 2026