Unfinished Business

The front page of the August 18 is sue of the West Berlin newspaper, Bild Zeitung, consisted of the photograph of the East German boy, Peter Fechter, dying at the foot of the Wall. The caption read: Vopos let refugee bleed to death. Amis look on. “Vopos” are the East German “people’s police,” or militia. “Amis” is German slang for “Americans.”

Of course, there was nothing else these individual soldiers could or should have done, except to stand passively watching the death agony of this unknown, unlucky boy. The impotence of those Amis was one more consequence of the defining impotence of their leader: from his failure to respond when, a year before, almost to the day, the Wall made its first probing appearance.

JB

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James Burnham

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The front page of the August 18 is sue of the West Berlin newspaper, Bild Zeitung, consisted of the photograph of the East German boy, Peter Fechter, dying at the foot of the Wall. The caption read: Vopos let refugee bleed to death. Amis look on. “Vopos” are the East German “people’s police,” or militia. “Amis” is German slang for “Americans.”

Of course, there was nothing else these individual soldiers could or should have done, except to stand passively watching the death agony of this unknown, unlucky boy. The impotence of those Amis was one more consequence of the defining impotence of their leader: from his failure to respond when, a year before, almost to the day, the Wall made its first probing appearance.