THE WALL CRUMBLES : GREAT ESCAPES

Thousands of people defied the Berlin Wall’s concrete, barbed wire, guards and automatic machine guns during its 28-year history. As many as 40,000 escaped . Most of these, 25,428 , fled in the first 14 weeks after the wall was built, until Christmas, 1961. One hundred or more died--most shot by East German border guards, according to officials at the Wall Museum at Checkpoint Charlie. Some of the most daring escapes: On Nov. 14, 1961, five people escaped in an old Opel four-seat car that was so heavy with scrap-metal armor plating it could hardly move.

By Christmas, 1961, 81-year-old East Berlin truck driver Erwin Becker, digging alone, had completed a 100-foot tunnel from a basement close to the wall. He led 28 people to freedom, then returned and organized another tunnel-digging group. They started from his small garden near the border. Becker was by then too weak to dig, but he stood guard, and all got out.

In November, 1962, 29 young people escaped through “Tunnel 29,” dug starting from West Berlin and running 395 feet. Solidly built, the tunnel could have been used for a long time but was flooded when a water pipe burst.

In 1964, six people were brought out, one at a time, by contorting themselves into a minuscule space created by removing the heater and manifold of an Isetta, a tiny three-wheeled car.

The night of March 30-31, 1983, two men on the eastern side of the wall shot an arrow--the tip weighted with steel and trailing a thin nylon wire--to a lower rooftop in the west. A helper on the western side then hauled a stronger steel wire across and the two men slid across on pulleys.

A girl in West Berlin made an imitation U.S. Army uniform, obtaining buttons and insignia by saying they were for a theater production. She borrowed a Ford sedan, stole U.S. military license plates and drove to East Berlin, bringing back two friends who were engaged to marry.

In East Berlin, another young woman made Soviet Army uniforms for three male student friends. They were respectfully saluted by East German border guards when they drove over to West Berlin, the girl hiding in the trunk.

Truck driver Klaus Brueske became a hero when he used his truck to smash through a frontier barrier and bring out family and friends. He was shot and fatally wounded but kept driving until safely across.

“Tunnel 57,” also named for the number of escapees, was the longest of all at 475 feet. It was also 39 feet underground at one point. It was dug by 36 students in 10 months from a toilet outhouse in East Berlin to a closed bakery on the western side.

East German security forgot about a sewer leading from Gleinstrasse in East Berlin to the western side, and more than 100 people used it before it was discovered--when an 18-year-old girl lacked the strength to replace the manhole cover.

At the Luisen cemetery, students dug down through a grave, using the gravestone to hide the entrance to their tunnel. About 200 people made it out before the route was discovered by guards who noticed an empty baby carriage next to the grave.