A student in East Berlin - 1964 . Press Photo East Berlin Refugees Escape in a Huge Tunnel under Berlin Wall

This is an extraordinarily fascinating and historically significant photograph of an escape made beneath the Berlin Wall.
The photographer behind this specific image is not officially known by name, as the picture was taken secretly by one of the *Fluchthelfer* (escape helpers). At the time, the rights to the photographs and documentation of this specific tunnel operation were sold exclusively to Western media outlets—as evidenced by the UPI Cablephoto stamp from the American news agency visible on your second image—to help fund the tunnel's construction.
Below, you will find the precise historical context surrounding this remarkable escape:

Background and Context
Location and Date: The photograph was taken on the night of October 3–4, 1964 (the telex on the back is dated October 5, 1964, shortly after the news was released). The location is the cellar of a vacant bakery at Bernauer Straße 97 in West Berlin.
The Scene: Here, you see an elderly woman (identified in archives as a 75-year-old) being hoisted up from the deep shaft of the escape tunnel into the safety of the Western sector using a makeshift pulley and rope. Young West German students assist her—weary but careful—onto the wooden floor.
Tunnel 57: This specific escape route is known in history books as Tunnel 57. It was given this name because a total of 57 East German refugees (men, women, and children) successfully crawled through it to freedom over the course of two nights.

Unique details of the tunnel
At a depth of 12 meters and a length of 145 meters, Tunnel 57 was the deepest, longest, and most expensive escape tunnel ever dug beneath the Berlin Wall. The tunnel ran from an outdoor toilet in an East Berlin courtyard (Strelitzer Straße 55) all the way to this bakery cellar in the West. [1, 2, 3]
The operation came to an abrupt and tragic end on the second night when the East German border police (Stasi) discovered the tunnel. During the ensuing shootout, an East German border guard (Egon Schultz) was killed by 'friendly fire' from his own colleagues—an incident the GDR subsequently exploited on a massive scale for communist propaganda purposes.

Is this a well-known photograph?
Yes, this is one of the most iconic and widely discussed images of Cold War tunnel escapes. Because the digging and the eventual escape were documented in photographs and on film with the knowledge of the helpers, these images circulated around the world and are now a permanent feature of exhibitions in Berlin (such as at the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Straße).

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