CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Once Upon a Time an Anti-Fascist

It is the late 1980s. The Berlin Wall is still intact, defined as the “Anti-Fascist Protection Wall“ by the East German authorities. This will soon change.

In this photo, that concept of the Berlin Wall being a protective “anti-Fascist barrier“ seems visually to be valid. This site in West Berlin , on “Wilhelmstraße“, was the former torture center of the Gestapo, sealed off from East Berlin by the Wall facing West Berlin. The Nazi torture center, a symbol of evil that the East Germans thought they could keep out with a wall.

But the context of an “Anti-Fascist Wall“ separating Berlin into East and West would also be confirmed by the fact that this informative sign about the Gestapo site in the West was constantly attacked/damaged by Fascist-fans and ultra-Nationalists in West Berlin who did not want to be reminded of the dark side of Nazi history and German Nationalism. In West Germany, a Nazi past or Nazi sympathy were no barrier to a successful career, quite the opposite. People of that era who “betrayed“ the Vaterland, like Berthold Brecht, or all the young West Germans who came to West Berlin to avoid the German military draft were ordered to disappear to the East-side of the Wall, according to the general reaction in West German media at a time of rising leftist movements.

Adjacent to this site stands a building, „Deutschlandhaus“, where........

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