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The Death Strip, Layer by Layer

People picture one wall with graffiti. It was a system several layers deep. Tap through the preserved border strip at Bernauer Strasse and see what each layer was for.

A free tool that opens up the border strip one layer at a time.

Almost every photograph of the Berlin Wall shows the outer wall facing West, the painted one. That was the last barrier, not the first. Behind it ran the raked sand, the patrol road, the lighting and a second wall that East Berliners lived against. Bernauer Strasse is the only place that keeps the whole depth of it, and this walks you through the layers on the real preserved section.

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