Victims of the Wall

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Heinz Jercha

1934–1962

Heinz Jercha, a 27-year-old butcher and father from West Berlin who helped people escape through a tunnel under Heidelberger Strasse, was shot by Stasi agents at the tunnel's East Berlin end on 27 March 1962 and died after crawling back to the West.

Dark bronze plaque headed "Zum Gedenken an Heinz Jercha" with text about an escape tunnel
Memorial plaque for Heinz Jercha at Heidelberger Strasse 35, Berlin-Neukölln Photo: OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Heinz Jercha was born in Berlin on 1 July 1934. A butcher by trade, he had fled East Germany himself two or three years before the Wall and, when the Wall was built, was living in West Berlin with his wife and their young daughter. In the spring of 1962 he joined an escape group started by a former colleague. Its members dug a tunnel under the border at Heidelberger Strasse, which divided Neukölln from Treptow; it ran from the cellar of number 35 on the West Berlin side to number 75 in the East.

From 21 March 1962 the group brought dozens of people to the West. Heinz Jercha had helped with the digging, and each evening he and Harry Seidel went to the East Berlin end to collect those waiting and lead them back. They carried pistols for their own protection. On one of these trips he got talking to two East Berlin students he had helped to escape; when they asked him to help friends who were also desperate to leave, he agreed.

An informant had betrayed the tunnel, and from 25 March Stasi agents lay in wait in the East Berlin building in whose cellar the tunnel ended. On the evening of 27 March, after the two men had brought an elderly couple through, they went back for the escape Heinz Jercha had arranged. According to Harry Seidel's later statement, he waited on the cellar stairs while Heinz went up to meet the fugitives, but the Stasi squad was waiting instead. According to Stasi files, when one of the men ordered him to surrender, he switched on his torch and immediately ran, without resisting. The agents opened fire. Both men got back through the tunnel, but, as the post-mortem showed, a ricochet had struck Heinz Jercha in the chest. Badly wounded, he crawled back to West Berlin, where he died shortly afterwards, aged 27.

His death brought an outpouring of sympathy in West Berlin. After public calls for his widow and five-year-old daughter to be provided for, the authorities gave his family the same status as war dependants, which from then on entitled them to a modest pension. Representatives of the federal government, the Senate and the districts attended his funeral at the Wald Cemetery in Zehlendorf on 5 April.

For a long time the circumstances remained unclear: the East German leadership denied responsibility and kept the files locked away. In the 1990s an investigation was opened against four Stasi agents identified as having fired, but because it was accepted in their favour that they had been trying to arrest an armed West Berliner who had entered East German territory illegally, the shooting could not be prosecuted as manslaughter, and the proceedings were discontinued without charges being brought. A memorial plaque on Heidelberger Strasse remembers Heinz Jercha.

Two glass panels in steel frames with text and small portraits, wreaths laid in front
Memorial panels at Kiefholzstrasse 79, Berlin-Plänterwald, for Heinz Jercha and other victims Photo: OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Also died on the sector border between Berlin-Neukölln and Berlin-Treptow

Sources

This profile is a summary written for this site. Every fact in it is taken from source 1, which also gives the full account with archival references.

  1. Christine Brecht, “Heinz Jercha”, biography in Chronik der Mauer, Federal Agency for Civic Education, Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam and Deutschlandradio. Accessed 23 September 2026. Read online. Basis for every fact in this profile, including the dates and place of death.
  2. German version of the same biography. Accessed 23 September 2026. Read online.
  3. Hans-Hermann Hertle and Maria Nooke (eds.), The Victims at the Berlin Wall, 1961–1989: A Biographical Handbook. Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam and Berlin Wall Foundation, Berlin 2011. The printed handbook from which the online biography is taken.
  4. Hans-Hermann Hertle and Maria Nooke, “140 Victims at the Berlin Wall, 1961–1989” (list), Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam and Berlin Wall Foundation, August 2017. PDF. Used to cross-check names and dates.
  5. Hans-Hermann Hertle and Maria Nooke, “The Victims at the Berlin Wall, 1961–1989: Findings of a Research Project”, August 2017. PDF. Source of the classification into escapees, people with no intent to escape, and border soldiers.

Further reading

Image credits

Cite this page

“Heinz Jercha”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/jercha-heinz/

Map

The pin position is based on the place of death described in source 1. Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors; course of the Wall in 1989 from Geoportal Berlin (dl-de/zero-2.0). Accessed 23 September 2026.