With The Wind to the West by Petschull. Jürgen,

Hard back book with colour pictorial dust jacket, 181 pages, illustrated with B/W plates, 18 chapters.

As the moon rose at midnight and a favourable breeze began to blow to the West and freedom, two East German families, four adults and four children, began an adventure that became the most dramatic escape yet undertaken from Eastern Europe.

This book tells of their almost unbelievable flight, in September 1979, to West Germany aboard a home-made hot air balloon, the largest such balloon (eight storeys high) ever made.