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No death was more tragic than
th at of Peter Fechter, an eighteen
year old East Berlín youth . Fech ter.
together with a fr iend. also 18 , tried
to reach West Berlín a t 2:12p.m. on
August 17, 1962- ayear after the
Wall went up. They charged up to
the Berlín Wa ll at top speed, two
blocks away from "Checkpo int
Charlie." the Friedrichstrasse secto r
crossing point rese rved for Allied
personne l and foreigne rs wan ting to
enter East Berlín. Border guards
spotted the two you ths and fired.
Fechter's friend made it over the
Wall. b u t Fechter fell, severely
wounded, in between the Wall and
the barbed wire adjo ining it.
He !ay the re slowly bleeding to
dea th in full view of angry, despair–
ing West Berliners. T he East Ger–
man bo rder guards took no action
for a full hou r , in spi te of Fechter's
repeated and agonized críes for
help. Horrified, the West Berlín on–
lookers urged , p leaded with. and de–
manded that the America n Military
Police a t Checkpoint Charlie send a
military ambulance to rescue the
boy. but th ey turned a deaf ear to
the ir pleas.
It wasn ' t till 3:10 p.m. that the •
East German border guards finally
decided to recover F echter's body .
But first they tri ed to throw a
smokescreen around F echter, pre–
suma bly to hide themselves while
they re trieved his body. At this stage
Ame rican MP's who had ea rlier
driven up to j o in the West' Berlín
police actua lly withdrew, and only a
U.S. Army he licopte r remained,
circl ing ove rhead and keeping head–
quarters informed.
East German Government Relaxing
Restrictions
The only East Be rliners and o ther
East Germans whom the Commu–
nist regime a llows to emi gra te are
the e lderly and pens ioners. Nowa–
days pensioners are even allowed to
spend sorne time each yea r in the
West, but foral! o ther o rdina ry East
Germans, the West is still
verboten.
Still, contact between families has
over th e yea rs been made much eas–
ier. The terrible human tragedy of
32
the Berlín Wa ll - indeed, o f the
division of G e rmany into West and
East - Jies in the divis ion a nd sepa–
ra ti on o f fam ilies. Mothers have
be en to rn from their sons and
da ughters; grandparents have had
to be "abandoned"; even husba nds
a nd wives have been d ivorced by
Communism's unwill ingness to
allow the free passage of people o r
ideas.
Unt il December 1963 , no West
Berliners were a llowed into East
Be rlín , even for a bri ef
on~~day
visit. This cut them off from the ir
family rnembers. Fo r a lmost every
West Be rliner had - perha ps s ti ll
has- relatives in East Berlin.j ust a
few short blocks away.
From December 1963 unti l June
1972, East Germany "li beralized"
th ei r regulations and a llowed West
Berliners to visit East Berlín on a
ve ry few specific days . Today , this
pract ice has also been further liber–
a lized, and many West Berline rs are
now ab le to visit East Ber lín and
even bring their cars with them.
Although hurnanitarian consid-
. era tions must have influenced this
lib era lizat ion , probably the prima ry
mot ive of the East G erman regime
was to obtain " hard" Western cur–
rency, and no Weste rn cur rency is
"harder" tha n the West German
ma rk . Every time a Wes t Berliner
wants to c ross one of the three offi–
cial bo rde r crossing points into East
Be rlín, he is req ui red by law to ex–
change six and a hal f "West Marks"
fo r "Eas t Marks" - a t a one- to-one
ra te , a lthough the exchange ra te in
West Be r lín is three to one and on
the Eas t Berlín black market, six to
one.
" Libera liza tion" has, however,
caused the East German gove rn–
ment - which is sti ll the most "Sta–
linist" and repressive of a l! Soviet
sa te ll ite regimes - certain problems.
Permission
to
visit Eas t Berlín has
brought in swarms of West Berlín
you ths each weekend ; they're out
for a cheap evening in Commun ist
restaurants, beer ha lls a nd night
spots - and out also to impress the
East Berlín girls. The result has
been a sha rp rise in illegi tima te
birt hs in Eas t Berlín, though a re–
cent agreement be tween the a uthor–
it ies of both parts o f the ci ty now
makes the Western youths pay fo r
the upkeep of the ch ildren they
leave behi nd und er Communisrn.
Also, these West Berli ners -
ma ny of them bored, restless. root–
less. and de l inqu e n t - have
brought, sa id Konrad Naumann, a
membe r of the a ll-powerful Com–
munist Poli tbureau in Eas t Berlí n ,
" the life-style of imperialism" to
East Berlín.
Naumann was ta lking about, as
the East German Communists a l–
ways do, the "corroding" Western
in flue nces and ideas which visitors
from West Be rli n bring over. West–
ern j uveni le delinq uency is not a big
problem to men like Naumann;
what does worry the bosses of the
East German Communist govern–
men t is the influence of the hu n–
dreds o f t housands of decent, hard–
working, courageous West Berliners
who cross the very visible Iron Cur–
tain fron tier of East Germany to
vis it the ir relatives and friends .
They bring wit h them their West–
ern, democratic, eth ica l, and reli–
gious values, and they share t hem·
behind the 1ron Curtain wit h those
cut off from freedom by the Berfin
Wall.
T he Wall remains what it is ca lled
in Germany, the
Schandmauer,
t he
"Wall of Sharne," but it is also a
wall of se lf-confessed fai lure. It re–
mains a monument
to
Commu–
nisrn 's inability to ca pture the hearts
and minds of free people and to
prevent their flight from Commu–
nism excep t by force . In the end it
will prove ineffective.
Asp irat ions for a reunited Ger–
rnany rnay líe somewhat dormant a t
p r esen t , bu t perhaps eventual ly
there will be a reviva! of this na–
tional dream. Then a powe rful drive
in bot h sections of the divided na–
tio n for a revitalized, united Ger–
rnany within a strong fede ra tion of
European states could bring an end
to the Wall. But, however it hap–
pens, the Wall will ul t imately col–
lapse , like the Cornmun ist regirne
which buil t it. O
The
PLAIN TRUTH August 1976