Berlin: Distractions at the Wall

• Share

The border guards on the Communist side of the Berlin Wall could hardly believe their eyes. There, across the barrier in West Berlin, stood a lissome girl methodically taking off her clothes. Military caution was forgotten as the Grepos stared in undisguised glee. Too late did they hear a scuffling noise at an unprotected spot along the Wall 200 yds. away and notice a dim figure dashing from its shadow. One more East German had escaped to the West, and last week a Red officer denounced the stripteaser's distracting "provocation" in the columns of the military weekly Volksarmee.

What's more, the officer raged, West Berlin police were trying to lull their Communist counterparts with an organized campaign of kindness. His complaint was well founded. For weeks West Berlin cops have been under orders to pass out cigarettes, candy and even food to East Berlin guards on the theory that this will lead them to deal less harshly with escapers trying to get to the West.

Results so far are inconclusive, but opportunities for flight will hardly be eased by a new construction program that began at the Wall fortnight ago. As a first stage, East German workers began tearing down the 95-mile barrier —only to replace it eventually with a better and more escape-proof model.

Plans call for the building of a four-obstacle ring made up of a high metal cyclone fence, a 6-ft.-deep ditch, a highway for the exclusive use of Red patrols, and a sanitary strip some 500 yds. wide sprinkled with police watchtowers. Where buildings and trees now stand, pink hollyhocks will grow—not so much to beautify the austere scene as to provide the Communist sharpshooters with a clear line of fire.