An Areligious Cemetery

Nothing about Berlin can be called normal, not the acres of rubble, not the artificial economy of the western sector, not the confusion that passes for an economy in the east--least of all, the way its people live.

Both the Western Powers and Russia are pouring money into their sectors, trying to make the two cities paragons of their respective system. "The island is the wife intrigue, hope and despair. Berliners on both sides have a childlike trust in re-unification, a dream that faded when Grottwohl built his SS of People's Police, and one that will be dimmed even further when West Germany has its army. Even now, except for the rubble, the two sectors bear little resemblance to each other. Another few years of uneasy balance, and they will be completely different.

In west Berlin, an increase program for 100,000 attractive, low-cost dwelling unties already well under war, while all the East offers is Stalin Alee, a mile or so of sterile masses of leaky buildings. Party faithfuls live here. The few with money patronize the exorbitant restaurants--"Warscham" and "Budapest." Houses of Culture, statue of Stalin, and a network of loudspeakers round out the scene.

One afternoon, I listened to some of the music blaring out of the loudspeakers. A deep bass voice, accompanied by orchestra, was singing: "Labor makes you healthy, labor makes you strong. Labor makes the world go round." A battalion of uniformed 12-years olds, "Free German Youth", marched post on its way from school.

The buildings in East Berlin best reflect how similar this totalitarianism is to that just past. The speaking new Russian embassy stands just a few blocks from where Hitler's suicide bunker still lies sprawled on its side. On e of my friends, who had been on a labor crew which built the embassy and had later field to the west, confided that it, too had a bunker in the basement, with concrete walls three feet thick. The resemblance between Stalin Allee's enormous, oppressive expanse of street and structure and Hitler's own Unter den Linden is more than coincidental.

But perhaps the most frightening sight in the East is Treptower Park, Russia's war cemetery. There is not a religious symbol in the place, just green lawn, statues, and the sayings of Stalin carved into huge stone blocks.

THE PEOPLE

Of all Berlin's wonders, its people are the most amazing. It does not take long to realize that the propaganda about West Berlin's courage and democracy is based on truth--and that about the great communist spirit of he East is not. West Berliners have become virtually a nationality in themselves. the long isolation and constant tension, the presence of an enlightened city government and the protection and education of the Western Allies have made them different from both East and other West Germans.

When the traveller goes from Bahnhof Zoo to Friedrichstrasse the violejnt change of atmosphere is not so much physical as in the attitudes of the people. "Hauptmann von Koppenick", a bitter satire on German militarism, plays to packed houses in West Berlin's new Schiller Theatre. The evening I attended the spirit of the West Berliner expressed itself in someting more powerful than words.

The play approached its climax. The hero who had borne the Stat's oppression silently until now, could take it no longer: "Man is a human being above all else! To the devil with 'order!' " he shouted. The audience jumped to its feet as one and applauded furiously.

Freedom has a special meaning for these people. this one city suffered a sixth of the damage--2,625,000,000 cubic feet of rubble--inflicted on all of Germany. Destruction was a chastising lesson in itself but since the war the West Berliner has had newer reminders of totalitarianism right in his own yard. He can never forget that he is 200 miles from the nearest western outpost, that sudden disappearances are commonplace, and that 350 refugees pour into his sector every day.

Goose-Stepping and Dead Nazism

Nazism is nowhere deader than in West Berlin; the city has elected Jewish widow, whose husband and children died in the concentration camps, as a delegate to the Bundesrepublik's parliament. the miniscule German Party's anti-Semitic rally of a few months ago drew immediate and hearted public protest.

And yet transition to democracy has its confusion too. The memories of '33'-45 are repressed, but poignant, and they sometimes come to the surface in weird ways.