Unhappy Anniversary

The leaders of West Berlin last week cautioned their citizens to commemorate the first year of the ugly Communist Wall with "meditation" rather than demonstrations. But many stubborn Wrest Berliners were not content simply to meditate when anniversary day arrived.

In factory after factory, workers passed word that every available car, truck and motorcycle must converge on the Wall at noon. An hour ahead of schedule, a solid line of traffic surged eastward toward the sector boundary. Near the Wall, the drivers jammed their cars into every inch of parking space, got out to cover their license plates (so as not to be identified by East German guards) and to lift their hoods (to expose their klaxons). Then they sat back and waited with hands on horns.

So it was that, at the stroke of 12, when a solemn three-minute hush was officially decreed in West Berlin, the city rocked instead to a deafening cacophony. East German loudspeakers responded with Communist marching songs. The klaxonfest might have gone on for hours but for the arrival of a carrot-topped youth clutching an eight-foot crucifix inscribed in white letters: Wir Klagen An [We Accuse]. With a bellow that brought half a dozen other young Berliners to his side, the lad, a 20-year-old factory worker named Dieter Bielig, raced to the Wall and brandished the cross at the fuming Grenzpolizei (border police). The West Berlin crowd, held back by police, roared its delight and showered rocks on the Communist guards, who retreated before replying with a powerful blast from a nearby water cannon.

Though they aimed the high-pressure nozzle directly at the cross, Bielig squared his shoulders and charged forward to the

Wall, which he used as a shelter. The frustrated Grepos next tried to dislodge Bielig and his helpers by throwing tear-gas grenades onto the western side. Two minutes later, six West Berlin cops sprinted to Bielig's side and rained potent tear-gas bombs of their own on the armored water cannon until its choking crew was forced to stagger away.

For six more hours, 600 slogan-chanting West Berliners tramped faithfully behind Dieter Bielig's cross as he crusaded the length of the Wall. Women with small babies joined the column; a wheel-chaired cripple pulled frantically on his wheels to keep up with the throng. Not until 1 a.m. did the mob tire and go home.

By then they had yelled themselves hoarse and thrown enough rocks at the Communists to satisfy even West Berlin's city fathers that some anniversaries call for more than meditation and three meek minutes of silence.

Four days after the anniversary explosion, an East German youth who tried to leap the Wall was shot down by the Grepos and left bleeding for almost an hour before he died within sight of a horrified crowd of West Berliners. Though U.S. sentries legally could have crossed the border and rescued the writhing refugee, they remained on the Western side of the Wall. U.S. Commandant Major General Albert Watson sent an angry note to his Soviet opposite number, protesting this "barbaric inhumanity"; there was no indication that the Russians were the least bit interested. Within 30 minutes of the shooting, Dieter Bielig was on hand to lay flowers at the Wall and plant his cross near the spot at which the Communists had shot the youth.

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