Christmas Carol

Not even Scrooge was mean enough to throw stones at Christmas trees. But last week in Berlin. East German Vopos pegged rocks at the twinkling colored lights strung on some 800 Christmas trees set up along the West Berlin side of the hated Wall dividing the city. The Communist policemen were poor shots--in a week of rock throwing they darkened only eight trees which were promptly replaced.

In this holiday season the Wall seems to grow higher and stronger. In German, the future is often implied in the present tense. Berliners say. "Die Mauer bleibt" --the Wall remains, and will remain. Julius Cardinal Doepfner. Roman Catholic Archbishop of Munich, observed: "One can understand why countless people are afraid of Christmas Eve; because on that very evening all the misery of our divided families will break out. Then many will comprehend how high the Wall is . . ."

Appeals Refused. On past Christmases. Berlin was the meeting place for families divided by East and West. From the Communist East Zone came die Alten, the old ones--elderly people who clung to pensions, apartments, old circles of friends, rather than escape to the West. The East people would file up the damp stairs of Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse in East Berlin, take the elevated, and ten minutes later emerge into the neon-lit bustle of West Berlin. There they were met by relatives, led to well-heated apartments, treated to chocolate, cigars--and pineapple, which is scarce in the East Zone.

Last week, all that was verboten. The Communists curtly refused appeals by West Berlin's senate and the German Red Cross for an easing of border restrictions during the holidays. As distinct from West Berliners, West Germans can still enter East Berlin if they have sufficient stamina and persistence. Hundreds lined up as Vopos pawed over their grey identification cards. "Do you always have to wait this long?" asked a man in the queue. A woman answered: "No. They're just making it hard for us. They want us to think twice before we come here again.''

The Communists are as restrictive of goods as of people. They have forbidden the sending of medicine or canned food from the West. The mails are so slow that a small package mailed by a West Berliner to an East Berlin relative a few blocks away may take weeks to be delivered.

Traditional Dishes. Though gloom is heavy on the West side of the Wall, it is thick enough to cut on the East. On Marx-Engels Platz. crowds wander through the "Christmas Market.'' a bright-painted hodgepodge of game booths, carrousels, sausage counters and Ferris wheels. The displays are trimmed with Tannenbaum branches and Christmas decorations, but the people remain grim and unconvivial. At the intersection of Wilhelmstrasse and Unter den Linden, knots of East Berliners gather to stare wistfully westward through the columns of the Brandenburg Gate. Murmured a bespectacled worker: "The Americans should have torn down the Wall. Now it is too late."

In West Berlin, the holiday tables were piled with traditional dishes--boiled carp for Christmas Eve, roast goose for Christmas Day. the cheery bunte Teller, plates piled high with fruit and marzipan, nuts and pastry. But West Berlin's authorities have banned the traditional New Year's Eve fireworks for fear some young people would lob the German equivalent of cherry bombs across the Wall into East Berlin and precipitate trouble. The Berlin mood last week was accurately reflected by a sardonic "Carol for Our Time" written by members of the press corps:

Roll the tanks to Checkpoint Charlie,

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

'Tis the season to be jolly,

Fa la la la la, la la la la . . .

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