If you were offered free food, free healthcare, a free apartment, and a guaranteed job, would you give up your liberty?
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If you were promised free food, free medical care, a free place to live, and a guaranteed job, would you give up your liberty?
That's the question that Joachim Neumann had to answer living in East Germany during the reign of the Soviet Union.
In 1961, using a borrowed Swiss passport, he made his escape into West Germany. But, having had to leave his family, his friends, and his girlfriend Christa behind, he immediately started working on ways to facilitate their escape.
Working with others in an abandoned bakery in the West, they started to construct a tunnel that had to extend not only beyond the Berlin Wall but the space behind it known as the "Death Strip."
After weeks of work and constant fear of being discovered by the Stasi, they finally emerged on the other side and began to coordinate with the people in the East.
For two days, people would quietly arrive at the house where the tunnel was concealed. They would deliver the password "Tokyo" and begin the slow journey crawling on their hands and knees through a cramped and dark tunnel to arrive in the West.
It didn't take long for the German Secret Police to discover the tunnel and immediately and violently shut it down.
But not before fifty-seven people to include Christa made it to the other side.
While we remember Tunnel 57 as a triumph, we also need to acknowledge the hundreds of other attempts that lead to imprisonment and death for thousands of other people who made the same choice but failed in the endeavor.
So, back to our question. Would you do it? Why did he do it?
Why would anybody leave a place that promised you all of these free things, only to make it to another place that promised you the freedom to pursue happiness?
Perhaps those who seek to redefine freedom as the "provision of things," rather than your freedom to choose your own path, fundamentally misunderstand both freedom and the human spirit itself.
The story of Tunnel Fifty-Seven and the untold stories of countless others stands as a powerful monument to the desire of people to not merely exist, but to be the author of one's own story. To see the challenges in life as an opportunity to create something that is uniquely our own.
For those of us who have never had to attempt such feats to merely to breathe free, we'd be wise to remember that while the promise of security is often very enticing, it is no substitute for the ability to pursue happiness and meaning that only genuine freedom can provide.
Thank you for joining us on The Why Minutes. If you have a Why that you would like us to address in one of our future episodes, please leave it in the comment section. I'm Nick Freitas for The Why Minutes. Thank you.
