World: BERLIN’S JAGGED WOUND

It is becoming ever clearer that the U.S. committed a tragic blunder last August in allowing the Reds to put up their wall through Berlin—and thus to win a test of strength with the West. The fact that the Wall has by now become the most familiar landmark in Berlin only makes the situation more poignant. Last week James Bell, TIME bureau chief in Germany, toured the 25-mile barrier. His report:

THIS crude grey parapet is no proper wall at all. It is an unsymmetrical thing, uncouth and raw, like a wound made by a jagged instrument. In many places it already is crumbling, but the Communists keep building it up, making it even higher. At first you wonder why it is so revolting to behold. Then you realize that the Wall was meant to be an insult to human dignity. As such it is a masterpiece; its execution is perfect because it is being wrought by artisans who consciously hate it.

Berlin’s Communist Wall has many faces. In the north and the south, where the French and American sectors touch Communist territory in the city’s outer fringes, the classic form of Soviet bloc frontier barrier is rising swiftly; here is row after row of barbed wire strung on concrete posts, and behind the wire are the wide plowed strips of earth visible at all times to the guards who wait with searchlights and machine guns in the squat, brown-painted wooden watchtowers near by.

In the heart of Berlin, the Wall takes on the particular character of East German Red Boss Walter Ulbricht and his careful planners: it destroys vision as well as physical contact. At its base are the big slabs of pressed rubble, the building material made from ruins of World War II’s damaged houses; above these are layers of smaller blocks of pressed rubble; then two large concrete blocks and their steel Y beams supporting a triangle of barbed wire that stretches monotonously mile after mile.

A Bath of Paint. On streets like the Bernauerstrasse, where the frontier literally ends at the sidewalk, windows of the drab apartment houses on the Communist side have been bricked up and doors bolted or barred from the basement level to the sixth floor. This is to stop the jumpers who have been leaping to freedom via the nets of willing West Berlin firemen on the street below. The trick is to toss a note into the street (“Urgent! Call the fire department! I am coming down in ten minutes!”), then pray that the nets arrive before the Communist Volkspolizei get wind of what is up. It can be a hazardous game for the West Berlin firemen as well as for the escapers. Two weeks ago, Vopos fired down at them with tommy guns; in another area last week, the firemen roared up to spread their nets in response to an appeal for help only to be drenched with red paint dumped on them by laughing Communists who had concocted a skillful hoax.

On the side streets leading back from the Wall into East Berlin, the only humans in sight are the Vopo guards, dirty uniforms open at the neck, cigarettes dangling from their lips. Now and then an armored car full of East German officers races up for a snap inspection, obviously fearful that other Vopos will follow the 300 Communist cops who themselves have jumped the Wall to the West.

The Orange X. Soon the task of the Communist patrols will be infinitely simpler, for teams of official excavators are ripping down buildings too close to the boundary all along the Wall. For the East German families who live along the frontier, the first tip-off is a clump of civilian surveyors, maps under their arms, tape measures in their hands. Every now and then, one of the surveyors nods, and an aide paints a huge orange X on the wall of a home. This means it is time for those inside to pack, for next day the bulldozer will be there to knock the place down.

The Wall and the evil things happening behind it have an irresistible attraction for West Berliners, who flock along its length by the thousands to stare across for hours on end. Some are just curious; others hope for a glimpse of some now separated brother, cousin or lover. Intricate signals are worked out to arrange these rendezvous of stares and waves; indeed, a portrait of two typical Berliners today might well show each gazing at the other through binoculars, for this is the common sight along the entire wall of Communism.

But for the occasional incident of violence, there is little actual tension along most of the barrier; kids fly kites near by, housewives shout contemptuous gibes at Vopos on the other side; the Vopos shrug, reply with an obscene gesture or just silence. I saw the Communist cops watching curiously as an old man approached the Wall from the western side at Heidelberger-strasse. His yellow arm band showed he was blind. Shuffling up to the wire, he reached out to feel the enormity of the barrier for himself. A young West Berlin woman standing near by curled her lip and cried to the pimple-faced youth in uniform across the wall: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” The young Vopo, flushing, looked the other way.