The more hopeless it is for the persecuted to escape by legal means, the more important it becomes to help them flee. Escape helpers – individuals or organisations – often have to resort to illegal means to help people escape: they fake passports, pay bribes, make financial transactions, organise hiding places and secret border crossings.

Escape helpers are often the only remaining possibility for migrants to leave a country and reach an exile country. Without escape helpers many people would not have been able to flee the Nazi regime. An example of this was the Emergency Rescue Committee which, according to estimates, helped 4,000 people to flee (not least by illegal means), including Lion Feuchtwanger, Heinrich Mann and Franz Werfel. Committed escape helpers such as the married couple Hans and Lisa Fittko helped numerous people by guiding them via secret routes through the Pyrenees.

People who wanted to escape from the dictatorial regime of the GDR also had to rely on escape helpers to get over the otherwise impenetrable border with fake passports, in converted cars, or through arduously dug tunnels.

Hiring the services of escape helpers is usually very costly. Many refugees pay their entire savings to them. Yet the escape itself is still often perilous. Again and again, people die because the escape helpers cannot or do not want to provide the necessary infrastructure. Even though escape helpers are of paramount importance for migrants, their actions are often not guided by altruism.

Meanwhile another form of escape help has arisen through the Internet: refugees and human rights activists discuss possible and successful escape routes on chat services, for example, or try to organise help for people who find themselves in distress while escaping. Smartphones have thus taken on existential importance for the refugees.

The way in which helping people to escape is perceived has changed greatly in recent years: aiding escapees in 1933–1945 and helping individuals to flee from the GDR are considered exemplary acts of kindness worthy of an Order of Merit, whereas little distinction is made today between (criminal) "human smugglers" and "escape helpers".

Further Reading
Fry, Varian: Auslieferung auf Verlangen. Die Rettung deutscher Emigranten in Marseille 1940/41. Herausgegeben von Wolfgang D. Elfe und Jan Hans. München: Carl Hanser Verlag 1986

Erichsen, Regine: Fluchthilfe. In: Krohn, Claus-Dieter (Hg.): Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration 1933-1945. Darmstadt: Primus Verlag. 1998, S. 62-81

Buchen, Stefan: Die neuen Staatsfeinde. Wie die Helfer syrischer Kriegsflüchtlinge in Deutschland kriminalisiert werden. Bonn: Dietz 2014