It happened at the Wall: A documentation in pictures of the military ring around West Berlin, its development from "August 13th", 1961 up to today with the most important events (soft cover, 125 pages, 1992, $2)
There is no text, just black and white photos with descriptions in five languages. The photos are harsh, and hit hard. A baby dropped from a window 5 stories up... Bodies of people who had not made it across... The early barricades. The barbed wire. The stone wall, which became a concrete wall, which became a taller concrete wall. The houses which had their windows walled up. Those same houses when they were later torn down. Those barking and snarling dogs. Observation towers, 210 of them.
It has been 13 years since The Wall fell. I had forgotten how bad it had been.
Of course, some of it I was too young to understand. I have vague memories of my parents talking about tanks in Berlin, but no one explained the American-Soviet stand-off to me, nor how close to war we were. I remember hearing of some people who made it over the wall to freedom, and some who did not. To me, it seemed kind of like a game. Looking at these pictures, I wonder how I could ever think that.
From the human stand-point, I was most disturbed by a picture of a boy on a bike being escorted to school by four soldiers on an armoured vehicle. The boy lived in a enclave of West Berlin surrounded by the Soviet area. The Soviets had tried to keep the boy from going to school in the nearby free area. Can you imagine being a child having to be escorted to school by soldiers? Can you imaging being a child having to pass through two cold war checkpoints to get to school? Can you imagine being a parent who had to send your child off every morning under those conditions? I can't.
Look for this amazing book on the new non-fiction table, avail. 5/27 (L-Ger)
