by VICTOR GROSSMAN
October 7th, for many, was a day of tears. Some were shed for family members who died or were captured during the attack by Hamas a year ago. Others—far, far more I fear—were in mourning for the more than 40,000 people who have since been killed in Gaza. Now, in addition, those killed in Lebanon. And, just as bitter tears at hearing of the many, many children who survived—as orphans, with amputated limbs, with physical and psychic scars which will burden them for a lifetime.
Yet on that same day there were a few less painful tears, simply at recalling an event long, long ago, completely painless, and for some at the time a very joyful event. Seventy-five years ago, in a small, most broken, most backward little corner of a land, the German Democratic Republic was born.
But how many at the time were skeptical! Only four years earlier small groups had combined here, returning from exile, resistance movements or allied armies, surviving concentration camps and prisons or ending years of frightened silence. Uniting them was a burning mission; after twelve years of terror and devastation, physical and mental, they were determined to create something new, cleansed of the poisons of fascism, racism, anti-human hatred, and to erect on that foundation a state which overcame hunger, poverty, constant fears of despair in a week, a month, a year, clear of greedy exploitation, of the oppression of women, of children, and dedicated to achieving friendship and cooperation with its neighbors and other peoples and cultures on all continents.
The little country which resulted—or small corner of a country—faced a broken, torn population, tainted by the poisoning of past years or by a cynical disbelief in any further plans or theories. It was faced, even before its birth, by fierce attacks with words, later with pictures, shaped by masters of twisting truth and unceasing, secretive activity and recruiting. The attacks were motivated and organized by those who had benefited from exploitation, expansion, hostility and conflict with neighbors and used divisiveness with such horrific success, giants like Krupp, Siemens, Bayer, BASF, Deutsche Bank, Rheinmetall and the landowner nobility, the Junkers, who had supported every Prussian and German war, who built up and joined with Hitler in robbing all Europe and enslaving or killing so many millions. All of them had been thrown out of East Germany—if they had not already fled from an advancing Red Army and that little band of anti-fascist dreamers. They again dominated a much larger portion of Germany, but were obsessed with their plans to return.
And, in the end, they proved stronger and succeeded. In 1990 they were able to resume their exploitation, with more modern tools and weapons but the same old goal, indeed the necessity, of expansion. They, too, marked an anniversary last week, celebrating October 3rd, the date of their triumph in 1990, their glorious “reunification” of Germany—which some Easterners call annexation, or colonization. It was this victory, a triumph for some, but which, even after so many years, caused bitter tears for those of us who were once inspired by our wishful hopes and dreams.
Despite all the many years, those who hated the GDR still hate it today. Indeed, they seem to fear it, and continue almost daily to revile its memories—like kicking an old horse cadaver which might yet bite or strike out with a hoof or two. They are worried; perhaps even those without tears for a long-gone past may yet retain just a few undesirable GDR memories, and even pass them on.
Oh yes, blunders were made, big blunders at times, and blemishes whose demise no-one can really regret. Some were made by people whose twelve years of struggle against fascism, with so much suffering and so many losses, had hardened and narrowed them, even as they aged, in ways which made it difficult to find rapport with generations with no such experience, and no such worries that those hostile to their little republic were often the same men, or their heirs, who were once responsible for German and world misery. Then too, many GDR leaders had spent those years in the USSR, with its great achievements—above all bearing the main burden in defeating the mighty Nazi war machine—but also with so many elements of repression. Far too seldom did they learn to speak and write in a way which infused large majorities with whole-hearted approval or enthusiasm.
And yet, despite blunders and blemishes, how many wonders were achieved! Such basic ones: No joblessness, no shutting down of a department, factory or mine without an equal job for everyone. Equal pay for women and young employees, with half a year paid maternity leave and a paid “household” day every month. Free, undisputed abortions. For a limited monthly tax all medical and dental visits, with hospital stays 100% covered. Hearing aids, glasses, every prescribed test and medicine, four week spa cures, for recuperation or preventative—and never a pfennig required! Plus three-week paid vacations, often in lakeside or seaside trade union resort hotels.
Add on totally free education, from full child care through to apprenticeship, college, graduate studies, with stipendiums making jobbing or money-earning interruptions superfluous and student debt unknown. Apartment rent under ten percent of income, urban and rural carfare twenty pfennigs, bakery, dairy, grocery and butcher prices the same everywhere, affordable and frozen over all the years. Even a word for “food pantry” was unknown; everyone in every job and school was guaranteed, for less than one mark, a good lunch—in Germany the main meal of the day. No-one went hungry. Or was homeless; evictions were legally forbidden. The housing shortage was being met with a giant program to provide a pleasant modern apartment to every city-dweller. About two million had been built—until unification. Today, owing to “regrettable high interest rates and rising costs” this problem is proving insoluble—except when it comes to super-luxury gentrification projects. In GDR days even ex-convicts, after serving their terms, were guaranteed a job and a home!
As for the blemishes, even cruelties, most castigated are always the ”Stasi” snooping and spying, the restriction of the Berlin Wall, censorship in the media and the arts. Their cause was not only the hard past experience of the men at the top but rather, primarily, to counteract extreme pressures from “the West” bolstered by a society, rich with the money and influence of those old war-lords, again—or still—in power, infused with the lush dollar millions of the Marshall Plan, plus rich resources of iron, good hard coal and other minerals so lacking in the East. The GDR supplied a decent, secure living standard to almost everyone, with more and more household appliances, cars and vacations abroad. Our tourist sites were beautiful Prague, Budapest, Leningrad, Moscow, our “Alps” the High Tatras of Slovakia, our “Caribbean” beaches the Black Sea sands of Bulgaria, Romania, Sochy or, closer, the chilly but beautiful Baltic, with well nigh half the bathers in happy, unselfconscious, full GDR nudity.
But Rome could not be built in a day, nor total Utopia. The commodity assortment in West Germany, perhaps second only to that of the USA, could not be matched by its small sibling. Making it worse in the final years: the billions needed for newly necessary electronics for its machinery exports, to be created by little GDR with no help from Sony, IBM, Silicon Valley or even the hard-pressed USSR. Then the billions spent so as not to lag too far behind in an ever more modern armament race. And finally, that giant home construction program, all to be paid for without raising rents, fares, food staple prices or charging more for health, education and culture, or cutting heavily subsidized children’s and youth clubs, books, records, theater, opera, ballet, even musicals.
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