"Back to the West"

I'm a little fuzzy about the details of our departure from Prague. My well-worn passport shows a DDR (Deutsche Demokratiche Republik) arrival stamp from Schonefeld Flughafen, which in 1964 was the only airport serving East Berlin, but I have absolutely no memory of the flight. My first really clear memory is a bus ride through Brandenburg and East Berlin on our way to the border with the west and our concern about our inevitable meeting with the infamous East German Volkspolizei, commonly known as the 'VoPo's'.

Formed after the end of World War II and the partition of Berlin into four zones, three Allied (British, French and American) that became West Berlin and one Russian zone that became East Berlin, the Volkspolitzei ('People's Police') were ostensibly a national law enforcement body. But the VoPo's were organized as a paramilitary force, complete with tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery. In their green uniforms, they were almost as feared as the Stasi, the East German secret police.

The VoPo's and the army had begun erecting what became known as the Berlin Wall in August 1961, its stated purpose to protect East Germany from the negative influence of western society, especially 'fascist sympathizers'. The wall was officially designated the "anti-fascist protection rampart", part of an effort to create a crime-free worker's state. And in the heavy hands of the Stasi and the VoPo's, they had succeeded admirably. There was virtually no crime in East Germany.

What had started in 1961 as a barbed-wire fence had by 1964 become a massive concrete barrier stretching for hundreds of miles with a three-and-a-half mile wide 'zonal border' on the East German side. In East Berlin, they had added a tall, steel-mesh fence that created a 'death strip' complete with landmines and watchtowers. Gunter Litwin was the first to die attempting to cross into the west in 1961. Nearly 200 more would follow before the wall came down in 1990. And the job of guarding the wall belonged to the VoPo's.

The bus ride into East Berlin was somewhat reminiscent of our arrival in Budapest in that the buildings seemed unusually dark by western standards except for glaring illumination of street lamps. (Why did we always seem to arrive in the middle of the night?) Oddly enough, it turned out West Berliners favored romantic gas lamps while in East Berlin they'd gone all electric. The major difference was that most of the buildings looked relatively new, although utterly lacking in anything one might call architectural style. Many were enormous apartment blocks, what in the states might be called 'the projects'.

These forbidding apartment blocks, mixed in with much older buildings, continued along Karl-Marx-Allee to within a half-mile of the border. But as we drew closer to the wall, we saw only old buildings, many appearing bricked-up and abandoned. The wall itself zigzagged through the streets, sometimes very close to deserted buildings, sometimes with a wide 'no-man's land' between brick and wire. Ahead, we could see the Brandenburg Gate and nearby the border crossing at Friedrichstrasse made famous in so many spy movies, 'Checkpoint Charlie'.

As our bus approached the barriers, we could see several smaller walls bristling with barbed-wire that squeezed the wide boulevard down to a narrow passage. We were waved off to one side by armed VoPo's, two of whom boarded the bus and began collecting our passports. Soldiers wearing several different uniforms stood by at the crossing, the VoPo's with their distinctive green uniforms and others we did not recognize, presumably East German Army. There were also men in those ubiquitous long leather coats, who we assumed to be Stasi, that took all the passports into a shed and examined them by the light of a bare bulb that we could see through the windows.

It was a scene right out of a John Le Carre novel, glaring flood lamps creating moody reflections on the wet pavement, occasional pedestrians looking at us curiously while their papers were checked before being allowed to pass, oddly enough most coming from west to east. Finally, one of the Stasi boarded the bus and began returning our passports, in each case carefully comparing us to our photographs. Occasionally, he would ask someone a question in English, usually too softly for most of us to hear. We probably all gave him more information than he asked for because he finally smiled as he left the bus and rather grandly waved us on.

The barriers were raised and the bus lurched forward across a kind of DMZ along Friedrichstrasse. Beyond that, the actual 'Checkpoint Charlie' was little more than a shack. American MP's detained us only briefly, giving us the chance to realize that we were back in the west. To one side, was the Famous Cafe Adler ('the Eagle's Cafe') where officials and tourists alike could watch the comings and goings at the border crossing over a meal and a drink. On the other side, there were viewing platforms where people would look into East Berlin even in the middle of the night. And ahead of us, the bright lights of West Berlin. After two months behind the Iron Curtain, it looked like Disneyland.

West Berlin at night dazzled the eye with neon, buildings with exotic names like 'OSRAM' and 'AEG', signs for 'Saba', 'Telefunken' and 'Bosch'. And along the major thoroughfare, Kurfuerstendamm, busy shops with signs 'verkauf und ankauf' ('buying and selling') and the twinkling lights of the Gloria Palast Cinema. I saw a movie at the Gloria Palast on my second night in West Berlin, "Liebschusse Aus Moskau" ("From Russia With Love" before it had been released in the states, dubbed in German). Further along, the famous Franzier Cafe, a well-known meeting place that demonstrated the kind of vibrant city center we had not seen in months (if ever).

The contrast between East and West Berlin was no less striking in daylight. On the western side of the wall, the letters 'KZ' had been spray-painted in several places. I learned that stood for "concentration camp". There was a large sign, written in English, facing east that read "There Is Only One Berlin". In every cafe, market or souvenir shop there were photos and other mementos of President Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. One of the most poignant sights was on Bernauer Strasse where buildings in which people once lived had become a part of the wall itself. The bricked-over windows (always with one brick missing for snipers) were the east, the sidewalk just outside them the west. But perhaps the saddest sight of all had nothing to do with the Cold War - the bombed-out ruin of the Kaiser Wilhelm church spire, now a World War II memorial in the center of a modern city.

Once in West Berlin, our group had a couple of weeks off before we were to rendezvous again in Copenhagen for the second part of our production schedule. We all had 'open tickets' from the airlines that allowed us within preset geographic points to fly just about anywhere we wanted. I decided to stay in West Berlin for a few days while most of the others flew directly back to their home cities. I almost stayed in West Berlin, I loved the city that much, but London and New York were calling and I had to answer.

I spent a couple of days in London but, in retrospect, made the mistake of staying at the Hilton. Not that there was anything wrong with the hotel, just that in longing for something American I missed the opportunity of staying in a truly English hotel. I finally returned to New York with more than a week to go before heading back to Europe. I was visiting my father's apartment on Fifth Avenue & 14th Street and was watching television with my sisters the night The Beatles first appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show".


NEXT: Back to Europe"