"My Visit to Communist East Berlin in 1968" by CD Burr

 

Off to Berlin (1968)  I was thirteen. 

My dad, an Army chaplain, was stationed in Germany from 1967 to 1970, and several times a year, he would pack the family into our 1966 Chevy Impala for a week-long vacation, driving on autobahns and over steep Alpine roads.  We toured at least thirteen countries during our three-year stay. I have fond memories of every visit, but one destination holds a firm and passionate grip on my memory: Soviet-occupied East Berlin, a communist stronghold that Mom and I visited in the spring of 1968.  

Mom invited me, at 13, to go with her and a group of officer's wives on a tour of the divided city of Berlin, which was like an island surrounded by communist East Germany.   We planned to stay in U.S.-occupied West Berlin but to get there, we had to travel over seven hours on a train--through the night and through communist East Germany.  Even though our sleeper cabin was comfortable, traveling through a communist country terrified me.  I had been taught at an early age that communists were the enemy, harboring nuclear weapons that could destroy American cities.  Mom and the other women in our group assured me we would be safe but I was nervous. 

In the middle of the night, when the train stopped at an East German depot, I peeked through our cabin curtain.  I instantly recoiled at the sight of armed communist soldiers in black coats holding long rifles and scanning the length of the train. Earlier in the day, I had been reading “The Diary of Anne Frank,” and the soldiers within fifteen feet of my window reminded me of Nazis who murdered the young Jewish girl and her family. Would they shoot me for spying on them? I flopped back on my bunk, wide-eyed and rigid, until the train slowly moved forward with a clackety-clack that kept me awake until dawn.

We disembarked in West Berlin, where the United States, Britain, and France secured sections of the former capital of pre-war Germany. We stayed three days in plainly decorated but comfortable and secure American military lodging. 

When we ventured into the modern and friendly city of West Berlin, I soon forgot we were on a fragile island surrounded by a communist country. It was a modern, bustling city restored with the help of the US, French, and British after bombs decimated it in 1945. In 1968, it showcased neon lights and contemporary, tall glass buildings. I stepped onto the first moving sidewalk I had ever seen and was in awe of the up-to-date, colorful mini-skirts and leather knee-high boots in shop windows. In the center of downtown, the bombed-out and blackened carcass of a cathedral, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, stood erect and defiant next to a contemporary hexagonal-shaped church. The contrast was startling. 

1968 Berlin, from a postcard I saved

I had many conflicting feelings during our stay in Berlin.  I felt like an adult when Mom told me to stand tall as I followed the women into a dance hall one night and dined with them in a swanky restaurant at the top of a high-rise tower on another evening. I felt like an eight-year-old after she ordered me to scrunch down as she bought tickets for children under twelve before visiting museums and boarding tour buses. I was entranced by mummies and Egyptian artifacts, especially the 3,000-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti displayed in a museum, and filled with dread as our tour bus drove past the bunker where Adolf Hitler took his life at the end of the war.  We were told that some people think he fled to another country — an idea that horrified me.  Could he still be out in the world plotting more destruction and evil?*   

The most embedded and distinct memories of our Berlin trip stem from the sights we saw from our tour bus, traveling alongside the Berlin Wall — a part of the Soviet-influenced Iron Curtain. The wall bore the scars of the communist rapid takeover in 1961 when Soviet soldiers herded people out of their homes at gunpoint, marching them away from an invisible line dividing east from west Berlin. Under the Soviet Union's direction, the wall grew solid and menacing, fracturing family units and splitting friends apart for years.  In 1968, communication between family and friends separated by the wall was forbidden—no visits, no phone calls. Those trying to scale the wall were shot, a number that reached 140 by the time the wall came down over twenty years after our visit.

Photo of memorial taken with my Kodak Instamatic 

Crude components of the hastily constructed 1961 Berlin Wall remain etched in my memory from my visit 57 years ago: bricked-over doors and windows of homes and businesses, old stone walls topped with shards of glass, and memorials featuring crosses and photos. In 1968, the wall encircling the free Western part of the city had been expanded outward from the bricked-up building facades by the Soviets, who planted explosives, installed flood lights, and spread razor wire and spikes. Armed soldiers surveyed the grounds from the towers.  

After an hour, our guide informed us that the next loop of our tour was located behind the wall, through the streets of East Berlin. If the idea was too frightening, he warned, now was the time to exit the bus.  No one would be allowed to get on or off the bus once we passed through Checkpoint Charlie, the guard station.  I chose to stay with the group of American women, who repeatedly assured us that we were safe.  I was tense but curious, and I reasoned that I would have amazing photos to share with Dad after we got home.  I didn't hear the instructions not to take any photos.

Our bus inched its way up to Checkpoint Charlie, on the edge of the Berlin Wall, past the razor wire and x-shaped barriers into East Berlin, and came to a stop.  Two stone-faced Soviet soldiers boarded and walked down the aisle, asking for our passports. They warned us not to get off the bus or open the windows to speak to anyone outside.  My heart pounded as I witnessed them take the stack of passports off the bus and into an office.  Would they give them back?

As the bus rolled away from Checkpoint Charlie, I worried that we would be detained on the communist side. East Berlin seemed hungry to imprison more people. We left behind a vibrant, colorful metropolis and entered a grim cityscape devoid of color and high-rises. The experience has always reminded me of The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy woke up in monotone Kansas after dancing and singing through technicolor Oz. Only East Berlin was not Kansas. 

The east side seemed lost in time, displaying acres of World War II charred and crumbled ruins. Many lots resembled prison grounds, with concrete gray buildings, gray sidewalks, and gray dirt yards devoid of grass or trees.  Street after monochrome street yielded an apocalyptic emptiness.

 World War II ruins in East Berlin. (Mom scolded me and took my camera after I took the photo.)  

Where were the people? I wondered about the young girls who lived there, who couldn't watch TV or listen to the radio, who probably didn’t know about the Beatles, miniskirts, or bell-bottom jeans. During the hour-long tour, we observed a few late-model gray automobiles and fewer than a dozen pedestrians wearing gray or black coats.  No one looked in our direction.  

When we returned to Checkpoint Charlie, Soviet soldiers ordered us off the bus while armed men inspected the entire vehicle—inside, back, front, and on top. They checked under the hood and beneath the undercarriage with long-handled mirrors on wheels. What if they found someone?  Would they shoot them in front of us? We had learned how escapees hid in dug-out cushions of car seats, so it was no surprise they checked everything. 

At Checkpoint Charley.  I'm relieved to be back in West Berlin

I never thought I’d see that secure wall collapse, but almost twenty years later, I witnessed what I thought was a miracle.  In 1986, President Reagan demanded that the Soviet Union “tear down that wall,” and then it happened on November 9, 1989. I watched the live newscast from my home in Arizona. People danced on top of the walls and hugged relatives they had not seen in 28 years! Tears flowed down my cheeks as I jumped up and down with them, hugging my startled children. 

Seven years after the wall disappeared, a distant cousin whom we had never met had grown up in communist East Germany and now had the freedom to travel to the US. We had no idea we were related to someone on the other side of the wall.

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What I witnessed in Berlin as a young teenager was extreme authoritarian communism, and the experience cemented within me a deep gratitude for my country — a democratic republic that values "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  By 1969, I was concerned about our country after seeing photos of war protestors burning the American flag.  I thought these young Americans should tour East Berlin; perhaps then, they would be more grateful for our country!  But when the Kent State students were shot while peacefully protesting in 1970, I wondered--how is the brutality of shooting peaceful protestors different from being shot in East Berlin for scaling a wall?  

One hope I had as a teenager for the East Germans was knowing that the United States broadcasted democratic ideas and news to people imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain.  A few who listened to contraband radios in secret might spread the word that they have not been forgotten.  It was part of the Voice of America, known as Radio Free Europe, which was active around the world-- until recently.

President Trump has withdrawn funding from the Voice of America, which had always been dedicated to objective reporting.  In his view, the press is the enemy of the people. Our president's promise to end Voice of America brings back all of those old images of a brutal and authoritarian East Berlin: where people were jailed without due process, where a free press was nonexistent,  where people could not visit their relatives a few miles away,  and where dissent and freedom of speech were prosecuted. In contrast, the United States' Constitution emphasizes a free press, freedom of speech, and due process in its courts of law.  Those ideals — democratic ideals — have often been in jeopardy with past administrations, but the present administration's glaring hostility toward these rights is unprecedented. 

President Trump has not only smashed his iron fist through the First Amendment's clear guidance about the free press, he has denigrated people like me who have decided to vote for moderate Democrats. He calls Democrats "radical lunatics" and "communists," which is misleading and horribly disrespectful to American citizens, especially to those of us who have witnessed authoritarian communism.  

I refuse to be intimidated by the strong-man rhetoric. Through my vote and my words, I will defend the free press, freedom of speech, social justice, and civil rights. 

Furthermore, I am NOT a Communist.

.--CD Burr   

*  Alternate Soviet-influenced conspiracy theories surfaced immediately after Hitler's death and continue to this day.  Reliable witnesses, however, claim the bodies were recovered from the bunker and burned to ashes.  After extensive research, West Germany declared Hitler dead and issued a death certificate in 1956.