A Czech Border Guard’s Daring Escape to the West (471)

What happens when the man guarding the Iron Curtain decides to escape through it himself?

In 1975, Jiří Barteček was a Czechoslovak border guard, trained to track fugitives with a German shepherd and ordered to stop anyone attempting to reach Austria. Yet Jiří had no intention of defending the communist system. Haunted by the Soviet-led invasion of 1968 and determined never to shoot an innocent person, he secretly studied the border’s weaknesses and planned an audacious escape.

One night, accompanied by two friends and carrying his AK-47, he disabled the alarm, slipped beneath the wire and plunged into a river crossing. His ordeal did not end in the West. After days hiding around Vienna, Jiří entered an Austrian refugee camp—where an unknown gunman twice tried to kill him.

This is a story of courage, chance and survival, told by the border guard who turned the Iron Curtain against itself.

Curated episode extras ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://coldwarconversations.com/episode471

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