Life

Radio review: Lessons on walls and borders

Nuala McCann
Nuala McCann Nuala McCann

Intrigue: Tunnel 29 BBC Sounds

It is a tunnel the width of a coffin and Joachim is crawling through it with a torch in one hand and a gun in the other.

He knows if the soldiers catch up with him, he’ll be shot ... he can see the small light in the distance, that spells safety, that spells hope.

It’s easy to get hooked on this series by presenter and producer Helena Merriman.

She paints pictures that grip you – it’s the story of the Berlin wall and of a tunnel beneath it and the risks people took to escape.

But what strikes when we meet Joachim is the incredulity of Berliners at that decision to build a wall.

It’s a podcast that offers a history lesson too.

Berlin had been sliced up after the war and later, millions were leaving East Germany – the communist controlled side - and never coming back. It spelled disaster for the economy, the brightest were leaving and there were whole towns without a single doctor and teacher.

So you take 10,000 soldiers and you start putting up a wall overnight.

A young student, Joachim, laughed at the thought that the border could be shut overnight... it seemed ridiculous.

But up went that wall, cutting through parks, playgrounds, cemeteries, squares.

Where it runs into trees, they cut them down; where it cuts through houses, they brick them up.

What I loved about this podcast is how beautifully scripted it is.

It tells the stark truth of the Berlin Wall which seems so shocking to us.

“It’s like a weird version of musical statues, the music stops and there you are stuck - where you woke up that morning,” Merriman reports.

There are newborn babies separated from parents, there is a photograph of a mother with her baby standing behind the wall while the rest of her family is on the other side.

She’s holding the baby so that they can see it as the wall gets higher and higher.

And then a child’s kite struggles up into the air, flying free.

Merriman creates a real sense of suspense and conveys the unreality of it all.

There are escape stories a plenty – like the couple who swim across the river pushing their child in front of them in a bath tub.

It’s a podcast that would be a perfect introduction to the story of the wall for young history students but its appeal if far wider than that and there are salutary lessons for all of us about walls and borders.