East Side Of The Wall example essay topic

The end of World War II triggered the start of the Cold War. The victors of WWII, The United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union divided Germany and Berlin into four. The United States, Great Britain, and France were all capitalist and democratic, and the Soviet Union was communist. The United States, Great Britain, and France all were part of the same "team". The Soviet Union, however, wanted nothing to do with the others, so they decided to build a wall around their sector to keep the others out and their people in.

(Divided In Unity 87). The Berlin Wall went up in the middle of the night, 2 a.m. on August 13, 1961. It was, at first a low barbed wire fence, and then workers used cement to construct a permanent structure that was 96 feet long, and about 12 feet high. (Kelly 1). Travel between east and west was nearly impossible due to the restrictions.

There were 14,000 guards, 600 dogs, and approximately 302 watchtowers were placed to make sure that no one from the East escaped to the West. (The Wall). The Soviet Union had complete control over what went on in the Eastern sector. They had taken control of the only radio tower, and they decided what was broadcast ed over it. It was a crime to listen to broadcasts from the West. (Kelly 2).

And the newspapers that were produced in the East, the government had complete control over what was published in them: "Newspapers are the written voice of the state. Reporters do not launch independent investigation or expose government corruption. Journalists are more like secretaries, reporting what they are told, and nothing more". (Kelly 4). People that were prisoners in the East yearned for the freedom that people had in the West.

About 10,000 people tried escaping, around 5,000 made it, roughly 3,200 were jailed, and approximately 200 were killed and 200 injured from shootings at the Wall. One man, Peter Fechner who was an 18-year-old bricklayer, was shot while he was trying to escape, the guards wouldn't let anyone help him, so he bleed to death. (Kelly 2). He ended up becoming a symbol of everyone killed at the Wall.

People risked everything to get to the West, escaping over, through, and under the Berlin Wall. There were some pretty amazing ways that people found to escape. Kelly at The Freedom Forum, writes that, the Wetzel's and Strizyck's bought little pieces of cloth very slowly so they didn't raise any suspicion, and when they had enough, they pieced it together to form a hot air balloon. They had just enough fuel to make it over to the West side, which took them a few hours.

Because of this escape, the purchase of lightweight cloth was very strictly controlled. Other people that went over, a team of young mechanics made ladders that used pulleys and ropes, went over the wall without touching it, and two other men, used a bow to shoot a cable over, then they attached pulleys and did the 65 feet to get to the other side, in 30 seconds. (Associated Press 1). Lots of people found ways "through" the wall. One man crashed a truck with people through it, one woman from West Berlin, which I thought was very inventive, made a U.S. Army uniform, gathered badges by saying that they were for a play, borrowed an American car, and drove over the East Berlin and brought back two of her friends. (Kelly 1).

Some crazy escapes that I found are, a man hiding in a plastic cow, a photographer that had a woman give flowers to the guards, and as he took pictures, he got close enough to the gate to make a run for it, a man driving a little Austin Healy Sprite, that had it's windshield missing and it's top down, after getting waved to go to customs, he floored it, zoomed through the maze of barricades, and went under the 3-foot-high steel-lift barrier. Ducked down in the back was his fianc'e, and in the trunk was her 48-year-old mother. (Phillips 1). A 19-year-old girl, wrapped herself around a Diesel trucks motor, and hung on for an hour while the truck went through a checkpoint.

She ended up with server burns, but free. (Olsen 64) A group of four guys went through the gates, receiving salutes, because they were wearing Soviet uniforms a female friend had made. And one last story of people going through, a car called the Is etta, Italian made, was passed as exempt from searches at checkpoints because they thought that it was too small to harbor anyone, after it got exempted, the builders modified it so it could hold a person. Nine people escaped this way.

(Associated Press 1). People also found ways around the wall. One man, Horst Beilharz, who was part of a crew on a ship, obeyed all the rules for two years while he planned his escape. One voyage, he packed an inflatable raft in his bag.

When he learned that his ship was going to pass a few miles from shore, he blew up the raft and hid it under a rusty lifeboat. When he could see sandy beaches and hills, he jumped overboard. By the time the others on the ship saw him, he was out of range of gunfire, and no one could get a lifeboat to move off the deck to capture him. Then, when Beilharz's flimsy raft collapsed after half an hour, he had to swim for six hours to cover the five miles of sea to get to a village.

(Olsen 11) Another ingenious plan by a man to get him and his family free consisted of many hours in a library. This elderly professor became a reputable authority on the pre-colonial history of Black Africa and produced a thesis that was published and attracted attention. Then he cleverly put the idea of an invitation to lecture at an African university in people's minds. He was approached by guards that said he may go, but he said no because he didn't want to leave his family.

Finally, he agreed to go because they were going to let his family come to. After being waved off at the airport by Ministry officials, the family got off at the first stop the plane made, and was in Giessen in less than a day. (Olsen 64) I think that tunnels were the most useful in helping people escape. There are several famous tunnels.

Tunnel 57, for example, took nearly six months to dig, was 50 feet underground, stretched 475 feet, and linked some toilets in a back yard to an old bakery in the West. This tunnel is called 57 because 31 women, 23 men and three children safely passed through the two-foot high tunnel. The best one, I think is the tunnel that was dug in a graveyard. People would bring flowers, mourn at the grave site, and then never to seen again on the East side of the wall. What's absurd is how the authorities found out about the tunnel. A woman accidentally dropped in, and left her baby carriage on top.

Guards quickly closed off the tunnel after that. (Associated Press 1). I found that most articles didn't mentioned particular things that people from the East had to "give up" when they escaped. In the only article I have than mentions specifically what one would have to give up, Olsen writes that, "Before the Wall, a man who judged the compromise intolerable paid for escape with a minimum price of an abandoned home and personal fortune". A little later in the article, Olsen writes, "Since 1961, one must consider death, maiming or a long prison sentence". (Olsen 65).

Other information I read told about how people kept looking behind their backs. In Newsweek, the father, Klaus Klein said, "I was terrified that they would shoot me in the back". I read how families that lived on either side of the wall, weren't allowed to have contact with the other side. So I can imagine that when people escaped, they also had to give up talking to their other family members and friends that they left behind on the other side. The building of the Berlin Wall was a huge separation. Not only between parts of the city and the government, but between families and what they believed in.

People's rights in the East were stripped from them. The government was the supreme voice of the city. People's yearn to be free led them to do all sorts of ingenious, courageous, and deadly acts. The cost of their life outweighed the benefit of freedom.

Bibliography

Escape Stories". Associated Press. New York, N.Y. (c) 2000"Escaping Under the Berlin Wall".
Newsweek. March 8, 1999: 54.
Online InfoTrac Web: General Reference Center Gold. Accessed: February 2002 Glaser, Andreas.
Divided in Unity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, (c) 2000.
Kelly, Susan Brooks. "Two Sides, One Story". The Freedom Forum. Arlington, VA. 1999.
8-85 Phillips, Martin. "Berlin Escape Ordeal 10 years Ago Today... The Wall Came Down". The Sun. London, England. Nov 9, 1999.
Online: News Group Newspapers Ltd. 6 Olsen, A J. "Breaching 'The Wall': The Odds Grow". The New York Times. New York, N.Y. August 9, 1964.
11+Colin, Armand. URL: "A Concrete Curtain: The Life and Death of The Berlin Wall" creation: September 20, 1999.
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