Peter Bills: Grim memories of living dead behind wall

Checkpoint Charlie was the delineation between life and the deadly existence of East Berlin. Photo / NZ Herald

The blubbery bottom half of his neck had collapsed into a heap in his shoulders, like some wrecked blancmange. On the top of his podgy head sat a military cap of drab green.

His face was unsmiling; doubtless, a key requisite for the job. He was a border guard at Checkpoint Charlie on the East-West German border and this repugnant representative of a similarly vile regime was there to intimidate, to scare.

"Writer"? He looked at the word and almost spat it out of his mouth in contempt. In the old East Germany, writers were regarded as sub-human species, something nasty you might inadvertently find attached to the sole of your boot.

In English as broken as his rotting teeth, he enquired what I wrote about. The reply wiped the leer off his face; "Football; sometimes Dynamo Berlin. A good striker you have ... Muller (or whatever his name was)."

Suddenly, the mask cracked. What passed for a smile crept across his face. "Good team, ya, good player, no," he retorted. I was into East Berlin.

Not that there was anything much I could do once I was there, except kill time and ward off the grim cocktail of deep depression mixed with the constant images of dark, wrecked buildings.

This was 1981 and the Berlin Wall was still intact, would be for another eight years. But in terms of the deprivation in the eastern sector - a quarter of the city controlled by the Soviets at the end of 1945 - it might as well have been 1951.

I walked past shattered buildings and half standing churches, still pock marked with bullet holes from World War II. The people hurried by, eyes set upon the dirty, uneven and broken pavements. Just occasionally, one would look up, more often a woman, to mentally undress my girlfriend with whom I was travelling.

She'd come prepared; dressing down in a dowdy velvet skirt and old shirt. No matter, the passing women would have had every item off her body if they could, such were their covetous expressions.

It was near Christmas and it was cold. We went into a shop, any shop, to squander some time and the ludicrous local currency everyone was forced to exchange for deutschmarks at the border crossing.

The shop was as grim, grey and dark as every building and person around it. You couldn't pick up an item, study it and decide whether or not to buy. You just pointed and a wardress, straight out of one of the concentration camps, marched across the shop, took it down and gave it to you with a snarl.

Having observed this scene, I decided to have some fun. I left the queue, reached up to a shelf and pulled down some item. All hell broke loose; shouting, waving of arms, hushed breaths among the cowed shoppers. Here was the total subjugation of a people.

We lasted until 5 that day, by which time it was dark. We arrived at the end of a long street leading back to Checkpoint Charlie, on top of which sat an enormous Christmas tree, its lights twinkling in the gloom. I remember saying to my girlfriend, "That's where life begins again; all is dead here. Let's go."

We were the lucky ones, the locals couldn't leave. They remained trapped until 1989 when the wall finally came down. By then, untold numbers had suffered and died - of deprivation, murder, lack of care and facilities ... of broken hearts.

This week has been the 20th anniversary of the re-unification of Germany. The evil eastern regime with its tin pot, puppet dictators controlled by Moscow has long gone.

Germany today is a thriving, vibrant country. Growth forecast for this year alone in recession ravaged Europe is 3.6 per cent. The powerful German engine may well drive the entire European continent into more prosperous times to come.

But as modern Europe grapples with its difficulties brought about by the financial crash after years of profligacy, it is worth remembering where it actually stands. The Soviet yoke is no more, the East German puppets long consigned to history.

The grim streets of eastern Berlin have been transformed into the equal partner of a throbbing, increasingly elegant city that, by now, probably takes for granted its status of freedom. But it never should.

Just one memory of the old Germany is sufficient to remind us what Europe was delivered from 20 years ago this week. German reunification had to come, the world had to move on. But that doesn't mean the lessons of the past should be forgotten.