The Great Escape

Siegfried Kapela was born in Zielona Góra, former Grünberg, just after WW II. His mother was German, his father Polish. Siegfried’s only goal was to escape from communist Poland and live in West Germany as a German. Unfortunately, the Iron Curtain was just lowered and Siegfried’s dream became his nightmare. 3 decades of passport denials, illegal border crossings, prison sentences, Stasi interrogations, establishing the Solidarity movement: all for nothing. Kapela’s escape, begun in 1961, ends only a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when he receives a passport for cooperation with communist security service. “The Great Escape” is a documentary about a man run over a soulless wheel of history.