Fleeing in a wooden box

Since the late 1960s, Gerhard Hoch had worked as a police officer at the border crossing Furth im Wald. There he witnessed numerous attempts to escape across the border in various ways. Once a Romanian tried to escape to West Germany on a train. In Romania, he worked in a factory that manufactured machinery parts for Germany. These were shipped in wooden boxes. He hid in one of these boxes taking food supplies on the way and his mates dispatched the box on the train. He succeeded and escaped in this way: “and when he was in Furth where the cargo waited for about three or four hours, he could hear that people outside were speaking German. So made himself noticeable by knocking on the wall of the box. We welcomed him and he received asylum."