Townhall...
Remembering
the Shame
By Suzanne Fields
8/12/2011
We’re
all children of our histories.
Some of us become victims, others reactors and rebels. Some of us just
keep
putting one foot in front of the other. Commemorations, celebrations
and
memorials become important, documenting what is, what was and what
might have
been.
Germany
commemorates the 50th
anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall this week. That wall
wasn’t as
lengthy as the Great Wall of China, nor did it have the mythic
significance of
the wall that Joshua’s trumpet brought down at Jericho. But the Berlin
Wall
marks a significant milestone in the history of the Cold War, when a
supposedly
civilized nation locked in its people and described it, in the
Orwellian
rhetoric every government bureaucrat could envy, as an “anti-fascist
protection
rampart.”
West
Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt
correctly called it the “Wall of Shame.”
This
was not the beginning, the middle
or the end of German history, but it will be remembered for a long time
because
it affected so many lives, personally, politically, nationally and
worldwide.
The wall sealed in the East Berliners, but it told the Allies that the
Soviet
Union was not likely to make a move on the rest of Berlin. The wall
became a
concrete expression, literally, of the evil inherent in communism.
The
wall contributed to the growth of
two separate cultures, communist and capitalist, conformist and free,
rigid and
expansive. Initiative and creativity in art and the spirit were limited
in East
Germany, stifling the soul and wounding the spirit, but imagination and
ambition inspired those eager enough for freedom to try all kinds of
adventurous attempts to escape. Some East Berliners dug tunnels; others
launched
themselves aloft in primitive hot-air balloons. Some even tried sliding
across
aerial wires that crossed over the wall. A few tried to sneak through
“ghost
stations” of the subway that no longer resounded to the noise of trains
from
the West.
Workmen
first chipped away at the
cobblestone streets, using the stones to build barriers, but quickly
moved on
to barbed wire and ugly concrete blocks. Ida Siekmann, an ordinary
Hausfrau,
watched in desperation as the wall rose to block the view from her
third-floor
apartment. She finally jumped rather than be stuck permanently behind a
wall.
She would have been 59 the next day. A memorial, often decorated with
flowers,
marks the spot where she died.
Between
the end of the war in 1945 and
1961, when the Wall was built, more than 3 million Germans fled the
Soviet
occupation to the Federal Republic of Germany and the West. Those who
lived on
Bernauer Strasse at the base of the Wall, who had always just walked
across the
street to the West, couldn’t believe their eyes. They soon learned that
more
than their view was blocked.
Today,
22 years after the wall fell,
their neighborhood is the center of city life. Mothers push children in
strollers to the market and shop for a variety of good things to eat
that East
Berliners never dreamed of. It’s also home to a museum dedicated to the
wall,
which tells its story in film and exhibits.
With
the same thoroughness the Germans
employed to record atrocities committed in their name by the Third
Reich, the
victims of the commissars of East Germany are commemorated as new
research
uncovers chilling facts from the files of the Stasi, the secret police
that
replaced the Gestapo in East Berlin. Many were shot by guards when they
tried
to climb over the wall. A few tried to swim across the river Spree and
were
shot or drowned. One baby was smothered accidentally while hiding in a
truck
with his parents.
“The
Victims at the Berlin Wall
1961-1989,” edited by historians Hans-Hermann Hertle and Maria Nooke,
tells the
stories of 136 men and women (and children) who died at the wall. (Full
disclosure: My daughter, Miriamne Fields, translated the stories into
English.)
Siegfried
Kroboth, age 5, was playing
at the bank of the river Spree after his family had safely fled East
Germany
and fell into the water. A little friend ran for help, but the West
German
police couldn’t save him because he was bobbing in a stretch of the
river under
Soviet control. The West German cops sought permission from guards to
retrieve,
but their pleas were ignored. The East German government said guards,
“good
Germans all,” had acted “in accordance” with the rules.
The
50th-anniversary commemoration is
a reminder of how quickly times change. John F. Kennedy was right when
he went
to Berlin in 1963 and sent Berliners on both sides of the wall into a
frenzy
with his proclamation that “Ich bin ein Berliner.” He was, he said, a
Berliner,
too. And so we all are.
Read
it at Townhall
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