The “Iron Curtain” was more than just a figure of speech - communist regimes installed thousands of miles of carefully guarded live barbed wire to completely isolate Eastern Europe from the West. This did not stop many from desperate attempts to escape from the totalitarian East - some succeeded, but many died. About 300 people are known to have died trying to escape from Czechoslovakia to the West - many were killed by border guards who were ordered to shoot on the spot.
One of them in Czechoslovakia was a priest of the severely persecuted Catholic Church named Joseph Skop. Hoping to reach East Germany before the Berlin Wall cut off communications with the West, he decided to cross the Elbe river undetected underwater in a wetsuit with rubber boots. Not being an expert, he used a rubber garden hose as a breathing tube, a fatal mistake as it was too long and too narrow to provide enough air. The Osprey wetsuit is on display in Technology in Dictatorship, a new exhibition at the National Technical Museum in Prague, along with other exhibits including barbed wire and many other items.