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The Berlin Wall - An underground operation
柏林墙——地下行动
Tunnel 29. By Helena Merriman.
《隧道29》作者：海伦娜·梅里曼
The plaque at 7 Schonholzer Strasse, in the trendy Prenzlauer Berg district of east Berlin, is easy to miss. Yet it marks one of the most astonishing episodes in the grim history of communist East Germany. For it was from here, in September 1962, that 29 East Berliners escaped to freedom via a narrow, 120-metre tunnel underneath the wall that had cleaved their city in two a year earlier. “Tunnel 29”, by Helena Merriman, a British journalist and broadcaster, began as a popular podcast, aired by the BBC in 2019 to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the wall. Happily, the written account is no less captivating.
这块牌匾位于东柏林新潮的普伦茨劳贝格区舍恩霍尔泽大街7号，很容易被人忽视。然而，它标志着共产主义东德严酷历史中最令人震惊的事件之一。因为正是从这里，1962年9月，29名东柏林人通过一条120米长的狭窄隧道逃往自由之地，一年前隧道之上的围墙将这座城市一分为二。《隧道29》由英国记者兼广播员海伦娜·梅里曼创作，最初是一个热门播客，于2019年由BBC播出，以纪念柏林墙倒塌30周年。令人高兴的是，文字形式的描述同样引人入胜。
The hero of the tale is Joachim Rudolph, whom Ms Merriman interviewed extensively in 2018. A young engineering student with a tragic family history, Mr Rudolph flees East Berlin less than two months after the wall’s construction — before concrete reinforcements, trigger-happy guards and wide strips of no-man’s-land were to render it almost unbreachable (at least 140 people were killed trying to escape from East Berlin before the wall came down in 1989). Safely ensconced at West Berlin’s Technical University, Mr Rudolph joins forces with a network of students and other activists aiming to smuggle out East Berliners. Yet unlike most of them, he is not seeking to bring loved ones over to the West. The motivations for his courage are hard to discern; he is not sure he understands them himself.
故事的主人公是约阿希姆·鲁道夫，梅里曼在2018年对他进行了大量采访。鲁道夫是一名年轻的工科学生，有着悲惨的家族历史，他在柏林墙建成后不到两个月就逃离了东柏林——在那之后加固的混凝土、喜欢开枪的警卫和大片的无人区使防线几乎无法被攻破（1989年柏林墙倒塌之前，至少有140人在试图逃离东柏林的过程中丧生）。鲁道夫安全藏身于西柏林工业大学，他加入了一个由学生和其他活动人士组成的网络，试图帮东柏林人偷渡出来。然而，与他们中的大多数人不同的是，他并不打算把亲人带到西柏林来。很难辨别他这份勇气背后的动机是什么；连他也不确定自己是否明白。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
词语解释
1.Yet it marks one of the most astonishing episodes in the grim history of communist East Germany.
grim 严肃的；令人沮丧的；阴沉的；糟糕的
The outlook is pretty grim.
前景令人甚感忧虑。
2.Safely ensconced at West Berlin’s Technical University, Mr Rudolph joins forces with a network of students and other activists aiming to smuggle out East Berliners.
ensconce 安置；安顿下来；使…隐藏
We have ensconce ourselves in the most beautiful villa in the south of France.
我们在法国南部最美丽的别墅里安顿下来。
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