Wall of Shame

(Editor's note: Following are excerpts from an article published in TIME magazine on August 31, 1962.)

In flat, open country within the city's northern boundary, the land to the west is checkered with brown wheatfields and lush, green, potato gardens. Eastward stretches a no-man's land where once fertile fields lie desolate and deathly still. They could be in two different worlds -- and, in a sense, they are. Even the countryside outside Berlin is divided into East and West by a vicious, impenetrable hedge of rusty barbed wire and concrete. As it snakes southward toward the partitioned city, it becomes the Wall.

Seldom in history have blocks and mortar been so malevolently employed or so richly hated in return. One year old this month, the Wall of Shame, as it is often called, cleaves Berlin's war-scarred face like an unhealed wound; its hideousness offends the eye as its inhumanity hurts the heart. For 27 miles it coils through the city, amputating proud squares and busy thoroughfares, marching insolently across graveyards and gardens, dividing families and friends, transforming whole streetfronts into bricked-up blankness. "The Wall," muses a Berlin policeman, "is not just sad. It is not just ridiculous. It is schizophrenic."

Last week a touch of mass schizophrenia rubbed off on West Berliners. Normally they are a cynical, cocksure breed who thumb their noses at trouble. "Mir kann keener," they brag in the local dialect. "No one can push me around." In 17 years as a cockpit of the cold war, West Berlin has usually reacted more coolly to its recurring alarms than Washington or Whitehall. Even the Wall seemed barely to have dented the city's composure.

Then, in an abrupt fit of rage at friend and foe alike, thousands of West Berliners went on a violent, four-day emotional bender that complicated the tense situation along the East-West barrier. What brought them to the boil was the death of 18-year-old Peter Fechter, shot while trying to cross the Wall. Many an East Berliner had died in similar efforts, but Fechter bled slowly to death in full view of a helpless, outraged crowd. Suddenly, all the pent-up frustrations exploded in an orgy of riots. After venting their anger on the detested East German border guards, rock hurling, catcalling West Berliners battled their own police, stoned Russian soldiers, and shouted insults at harassed U.S. troops.

The mob's voice echoed in every major capital of the world, forcing Russia and the West into another of those nightmarish Berlin confrontations. It emphasized once again that so long as the Wall is allowed to stand, a perpetual threat to world peace exists in the heart of Europe.

To Germans, the Wall's greatest mischief is its aim of permanently dismembering a divided nation whose people yearn to be reunified. West Berliners themselves must also think of their city's welfare. Said West Berlin's Mayor Willy Brandt last week: "The Wall must go, but until it goes, the city must live."

Brandt's words were prompted by Peter Fechter's ignominious death and the events that followed it. Fechter was an East Berlin bricklayer who had waited a year for an opportunity to join his sister in West Berlin. Because of his trade, he was allowed to work near the crumbling wall, and, with another 18-year-old, discovered a deserted lumberyard that was separated from a low stretch of Wall by a vacant lot and the "death strip," a border of sand within easy range of a dozen Communist Tommy guns.

When the pair made their dash early one afternoon last week, Fechter's friend managed to climb the six-foot-high barrier and leap over the barbed wire on top. But Fechter paused for a few fatal seconds. Long enough for the Grenzpolizei (border police) to raise their weapons and fire. Shot in the back by crossfire, Fechter fell back onto the death strip only 300 yards from Checkpoint Charlie, the U.S. command post at the busy Friedrichstrasse border crossing.

There he lay, moaning "Hilfe, Hilfe," while a growing throng of horrified West Berliners stood gaping on the other side of the barrier. As the minutes ticked past, photographers, cops, even a couple of U.S. military policemen, edged gingerly up to the Wall's western side to have a look at the hideous sight. One conscience-stricken U.S. second lieutenant could stand it no longer, picked up the "hot line" telephone to Major General Albert Watson II, the U.S. commandant in West Berlin. Back came the order: "Lieutenant, you have your orders. Stand fast. Do nothing." Not knowing the reason for the Americans' inaction, an agonized crowd swirled around the command post crying: "For God's sake, go get him." When a German reporter asked why the American troops did not rescue Fechter, one G.I. replied, "This is not our problem."

Fifty-five minutes after he had fallen to the ground, Peter Fechter's lifeless body was carted away by Communist cops. He was the 50th East German known to have been killed while attempting to breach the Wall.