On a stormy night, a pair of friends set out to prove something to the communists who controlled their country at the tail-end of the Cold War. On a one-way trip, they scaled an electrical tower as thunder boomed. Out of necessity, the two men zip-lined along high-voltage power lines from their homeland, Soviet Czechoslovakia, across the Iron Curtain.
The determined human spirit had beaten the communists, as they found freedom on the other side.
Daniel Zdenek Pohl was one of those two men, and only they truly understand what drove them to risk everything that night on July 18, 1986. Now, at age 57, he drives a cab in Las Vegas, Nevada, is married, and plans to retire soon. Both Mr. Pohl and his friend survived their ordeal.
He now keeps a drawer full of meticulous notes documenting in great detail their now-legendary flight to freedom and plans to publish a book about his escape from the Eastern Bloc to America.
From his east-side apartment, he recently spoke to The Epoch Times on the phone, telling us what it was like.
His homeland during the Soviet-era was “basically a big jail,” Mr. Pohl told the newspaper. “Why the troops are facing inland with machine gun, and not outland where the danger of the Western Bloc country is? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way Out
Mr. Pohl’s life began in a small town of some 10,000 people. Raised in Litomysl, 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Prague, surrounded by beautiful mountains, his childhood wasn’t an unhappy one.But the truth reached him about communist Czechoslovakia—the unfairness, malevolence, and corruption—and it disturbed him. Added to this, his dream of traveling to the West was forbidden.
His other grievances against the communists? Mr. Pohl’s father had gone to prison, though he never told his son for how long exactly. “He basically punched out a communist informant,” Mr. Pohl said.
More items to add? His good friend who worked in agriculture divulged how farmers had to use “an unnecessary amount of chemicals” in their produce. The communists had healthy, organic food, and this enraged the young Daniel Pohl.
And he, unlike the old-timers of his homeland who knew when to shut their mouths, freely aired his political views with no restraint.
He entertained thoughts of escape, he said, but soon his non-conformist ways made it a necessity. His dealing in foreign U.S. dollars and German Deutschmarks was illicit; but dodging the state’s mandatory two-year military service? He could serve “five years in prison,” he told the newspaper.
A Mean Shaolin Mind
He first met Robert Oswald in karate class. He was different, said Mr. Pohl, who was 19 at the time. The older Mr. Oswald was 35, a lumberjack, and wise about politics as he had experienced Czechoslovakian life before 1968 when the communist tanks rolled in.“He looked more like a mean Shaolin,” Mr. Pohl said of his friend, a physicist who sported a thick, 80s-era handlebar mustache. “We got talking about politics and things like that, and he enlightened me.”
The Mean Shaolin had his motives, too, for the communists had forced him to use defunct, unsafe equipment in his work, which had taken a toll on his hands. He feared he would become a cripple.
The friends soon got on the same page about fleeing Czechoslovakia and began to formulate their plans.
A dreadful hurdle lay between them and freedom: the Iron Curtain. This 4,300-mile- (6,920-kilometer-) long barrier of electrical fence, razor wire, mines, watchtowers, and machine gun nests had been perfected by the communists over three decades. Hugging the Eastern Bloc, it sealed its people off from the West.
Fortunately, Mr. Oswald was slightly unhinged. They had “to come up with something new, some novelty, something that would contradict common sense,” Mr. Pohl said, “something that no one has ever even tried before.”
Wild plans were drawn: A helium balloon. Hang-gliders. A rocket to launch them like human artillery. A tunnel under the Iron Curtain. Even a submarine, diving into the Danube River to emerge in Austria.
None were feasible, though. They were either too insane or too costly, yet, spurred on by the human spirit’s desire for freedom, their enterprise continued.
Planning their exit demanded meticulous surveying of the border. This was risky business, for interlopers would face border guards demanding identification, Mr. Pohl said, followed by interrogations and “who knows what else.”
Then, unexpectedly, their scouting uncovered a gap so “glaringly obvious” they could hardly believe it. At a nuclear power plant in Dukovany, in southern Czechoslovakia, a series of electrical towers had lines traveling southward, crossing the Iron Curtain near the Austrian border.
“We’re going to zip-line into Austria,” Mr. Oswald told Mr. Pohl.
He replied, “You’re clinically insane.”
“And that’s why we’re going to get out,” Mr. Oswald said.
The far tower was beyond that abominable perimeter, with its guards and machine guns, but wasn’t quite in Austria. A buffer zone or no-man’s land lay there, and from there they could walk to freedom.
The danger of zip-lining across powerlines was palpable. The towers soared to giddying heights of 250 feet (76 meters) over the fields, like great iron monsters, while big signs warned of live wires with a grim 380,000 volts coursing through them.
Yet, firming up their will, they returned home and engineered a set of pulley devices to serve as makeshift zip-line trolleys. They were compositely stowed in backpacks.
Their journey entailed more considerations besides the zip-lining. There was the 100-mile (160-kilometer) trek from their homes to Dukovany; but even more crucial, they needed an air-tight cover story, a social pretext for their every move, for the communists had eyes and informants everywhere, in every last town, village, and bus terminal.
Man Versus ‘Mission Impossible’
Nothing can stop the human spirit that desires freedom, Mr. Pohl once said. So it was with their great escape. When the day of embarkation arrived, they initiated their exit. It went something like this:A train ride from Litomysl takes them north, instead of south. They feign a jaunt to the mountains near Poland, shaking tailing informants, of which there are many.
They act like drunkards around anyone they know to be secret police. “My wife is going to kill me,” Mr. Oswald says, audibly maintaining the charade.
Catching a bus south, they reach Znojmo, the town nearest to Dukovany and the Iron Curtain. They cannot simply waltz off into the woods, however; a rock-solid alibi of the utmost plausibility is needed.
In town there is a tavern full of border patrol officers. The friends enter and, far from fading into a shadowy corner, they go straight “to the biggest table and paid for everybody,” Mr. Pohl said. Drinking, cracking raucous jokes, banging fists on tables, they play it up.
Lastly, in the tavern they picked up two ladies who became their alibi for ducking off into the woods after dark. Then, ditching the gals using some excuse, the friends vanish into the night.
At last, there it was. The tower. They were nearing the homestretch. They would have to hide in the only unmanicured growth nearby, the thorn bushes inside the tower’s perimeter, where they would lay low until the time was right.
The Iron Curtain was only a stone’s throw away. The slightest clink of metal, they knew, would be heard for miles, alerting guards with guns.
Meticulous planning had gotten them this far, but now as they prepped for their big climb they needed a miracle. They knew that the only thing that could cover their sounds was a thunderstorm—and a booming one. About all they could do was pray.
It took three days. Food and water ran out, and, parched from the heat, weak from hunger, bitten by mosquitoes, the friends had considered surrender over rotting to death. Yet, just before midnight on the third day, they felt droplets. Just a few.
“It started drizzling,” Mr. Pohl said. “We couldn’t wait any more. We literally took chances.”
Mr. Oswald led the ascent. After passing 30 feet (9 meters), the drizzling became a massive downpour.
As they climbed, a hunk of mud fell from Mr. Oswald’s boot, striking Mr. Pohl’s eye. “Just lovely,” he muttered, trying to flush his face, still clinging to the tower.
To say they zip-lined along high-voltage wires isn’t quite accurate. They passed those crackling high-voltage lines, a raging inferno in the rain, and reached the grounding wires at the tower’s apex, which would spare them electrocution. The only catch was, as the storm raged, they would become human lightning rods.
Thunder boomed as they unpacked their trolleys and struggled to assemble and hang them. These would carry their waterlogged deadweight and heavy packs to freedom, they hoped.
Yet they made one miscalculation, Mr. Pohl said. They hadn’t factored in the weight of two wet men on the wire at once.
Mr. Oswald was the first to hang his life on the line. Mr. Pohl followed. Their combined weight caused the wire to sag down to within a few dozen feet of the high-voltage wires. Sparks flew.
“The end of my long hair started glowing like when you’re trying to change a fluorescent lightbulb,” Mr. Pohl told us.
They didn’t exactly fly as we see watching YouTube nature channels, for the characteristic zipper sound would have been far too loud. The sight of guard towers, coils of razor wire, and fence line below them lay eerily near and was unnerving. They crept slowly and tediously, like aerialists, along the line, until finally they reached the tower on the far side.
From base to base, the aerialist act took four-and-a-half hours. Once safely grounded, they collapsed of exhaustion.
Free at last. Almost.
“Robert looked at me. He shook my hand,” Mr. Pohl told the newspaper.
“Even if we get caught, no one can take this away from me,” the mustached man had said.
A Zip-Line Legend Leaves for Las Vegas
Mr. Pohl’s zip-line journey hardly ends here. At Haugsdorf, the Austrian police were dumbfounded by the friends’ brazen breakout. Some of the Austrians were Czech agents and tried to thwart them at every turn, but after two years in Austria their visas finally came through.Mr. Oswald stayed in Austria, while Mr. Pohl was welcomed in America in 1988 where, in the decades following, he would drive a bottled water truck, an airport shuttle, and a limo, and, at the behest of his Czech karate instructor, write his manuscript. In 1993, he moved to Las Vegas where he worked for MGM Grand and drove a cab. Vegas is also where he met his wife, Delia Schloax.
“Actually, we met at the courthouse,” Mr. Pohl said, adding that he had “rolled through a stop sign.”
She had run a red light. And the rest was history.
Mr. Pohl’s zip-line saga has it all. A childhood derailed by state tyranny. A young man’s risky yet heroic dash for freedom against all odds. Finding a better life in a new world. And, for a happy ending, finding true love.
Today, with retirement just up the bend, Mr. Pohl shares what’s next. “We are seriously contemplating moving to Ecuador,” he said, adding that Ms. Schloax hails from there. Yet the country’s drug war, with its current presidential candidate recently having been shot, has forced them to hold off, for now.
Costa Rica and Puerto Rico are also on the table, Mr. Pohl said, adding that he’s “been playing around with a few income opportunities.”
