Comments on: And Others’ Lives Again http://www.ninme.com/archives/2008/03/and_others_lives_again.html Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:06:33 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Rueful Red http://www.ninme.com/archives/2008/03/and_others_lives_again.html#comment-21380 Rueful Red Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:31:42 +0000 http://www.ninme.com/archives/2008/03/and_others_lives_again.html#comment-21380 <p>I was over in East Berlin one New Year's Eve in the mid-70s. Fresh-faced girls were offering themselves for hard currency outside the U-bahn station on the Alexanderplatz. The nearby public news ticker was broadcasting that there were 15 million unemployed in Britain, and that Todor Zhivkov had sent fraternal greetings. A gaggle of little boys surrounded a policeman as he set off a succession of not-very-good penny bangers. The guard of honour goose-stepped in front of the monument to the victims of fascism and militarism. </p> <p>Then I looked into a church - Catholic - which was packed to the rafters with people absolutely intent on the service. I'd never seen such attentiveness. It was then I knew that Communism would soon be as dead as the Assyrian empire that I'd just viewed the remains of in the Pergamon Museum.</p> I was over in East Berlin one New Year’s Eve in the mid-70s. Fresh-faced girls were offering themselves for hard currency outside the U-bahn station on the Alexanderplatz. The nearby public news ticker was broadcasting that there were 15 million unemployed in Britain, and that Todor Zhivkov had sent fraternal greetings. A gaggle of little boys surrounded a policeman as he set off a succession of not-very-good penny bangers. The guard of honour goose-stepped in front of the monument to the victims of fascism and militarism.

Then I looked into a church - Catholic - which was packed to the rafters with people absolutely intent on the service. I’d never seen such attentiveness. It was then I knew that Communism would soon be as dead as the Assyrian empire that I’d just viewed the remains of in the Pergamon Museum.

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