Evening star., 1961-10-29
By EARL h. VOSS
star staff Writer

9se@ 0s@@A WAAsoA
When West German Ambas-
sador Wilhelm Grewe was in Ber-
lin q few weeks ago, the chief
of police took him to The Wall.
The Ambassador, who has been
one of Chancellor Adenauer's clos.
est and most trusted foreign pol
icy advisers for the last decade,
lived in Berlin for eight years
and the trip was as expected, a
deeply moving experience.
He clambered to the top Of the
small, wooden platform with some
difficulty because he Is lame. Os-
teomyelitis in his early teens left
him with q stiff hip and short
ened right leg but spared him
from service in Hitler's armies.
In the flat wasteland behind the
wall where the Communists had
razed the buildings to provide a
clear field of fire to stop East
Berliners trying to escape, coll
umns Of workers moved about
like prisoners In q concentration
camp. These were the East Ber-
liners who had worked in West
Berlin until the wall went up on
August Is, the Ambassador was
told. Now they were being
punished at manual labor to help
reinforce The Wall.
He stood there three or four
minutes surveying the sad scene
before he realized where he was.
He was standing in the middle Of
PotSdammer Platz, what had
been the heart Of the city before
World War II. The war and the
The Wall had transformed the
area beyond recognition.
Posters Come Down
The same day travellers to East
Berlin reported that the Com
munists had suddenly taken down
all the posters which had
promised that East Germany
would sign a peace treaty with the
Soviet Union before the end Of the
year. Premier Khrushchev had
ordered another zig in the Com
munist line, and the East Ger
mans were painfully conforming
to it-painfully because the u
BRIGHT regime had boasted i'm
pressively of its impending ele-
vation to more sovereign" status.
A fortnight later Ambassador
Grewe stood before microphones
outside the White House and sug-
geSted quietly that the West
should propose removal Of The
Wall. He had Just spent As min
utes with President Kennedy and
presumably had told him Of The
Walls demoralizing effect on the
isolated West Berliners.
But the atmosphere was totally
different. Washington was not
aware of the impact Of The Wall.
The Ambassadors suggestion that
The Wall should come down was
a rather unusual public disclosure
Of uneasiness with American for
eign policy, which was enduring
almost daily indignities at the
one gate in The Wall that was
still open with no hint that the
barrier should come down. There
was hardly a ripple in the re-
portage about the West German
proposal.
But there was no doubt In his
mind that the significance Of The
Wall and the challenge it poses
to Western determination to keep
West Berlin alive will eventually
dawn on this country.
The naked statistics are al
ready alarming. Whereas 100000
persons used to cross the Berlin
border daily before August 13,
only 500 cross both ways now.
industrial Workers
Whereas $4,000 East Berlin
technicians used to help West
Berlin's industries hum before
August 13, none Of them are al
lowed to work there now.
Whereas West Berlin's popula-
ton was holding steady or in
creasing in the years before Au-
gust 13, an exodus Of young peo-
pie is now under way. Last week
the outgoing count reached 1,700
persons, compared with TOO week =
just after The Wall went up.
Since August Is, Ambassador
Grewe has been wrestling with
the Berlin problem from dawn
to 2 am. every day. Almost daily
meetings of the Ambassadorial
Steering Group, with its pains
taking efforts to compose the
positions of the four Western
governments. and lesser meetings
of other technicians in working