Earlier this year I wrote about Peter Fechter in The Unquiet Death of Peter Fechter. 

Mr. Fechter was 18 years old when he was shot and left to die, pleading for help which the Communist east refused to provide while forbidding the west to render assistance. His pleas went silent after 50 minutes.

Looking over that post in light of a recent re-reading of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s speeches to the AFL-CIO in 1975, I see that I was missing an insight: it is not sufficiently clear to be against Communism. Our need to speak truth requires more precision.

For example, consider one of the youngest to die along the wall, although in his case it was not technically along the wall, but in the Spree River. 

A little boy, on his fifth birthday, played with his new ball as his parents prepared to take him to the countryside for a picnic to celebrate with his friends.

The ball rolled down the embankment and fell into the river. The boy ran after it and lay down on his stomach stretching over the water seeking to retrieve the ball with a stick. He fell in the water and witnesses frantically sought help. However, none dared jump in the water, knowing they’d be shot, like Peter Fletcher. 

By some idiosyncrasy, the West Berlin side of the border went only to the river’s edge in that part of the city; the river itself was considered all East German territory.

West German guards and firemen came and sought permission to rescue. Permission was denied. Over an hour later, East German scuba divers arrived and fished the dead boy out of the water as hundreds of folks on the west side cried, “Murderers! Murderers!” 

That was not the end of it. Instead of immediately returning the boy’s body to his parents in the west, Communist East Germany kept the body for four full days. 

As a postscript, many years later, more information was learned from the Stasi files: East German guards had seen the boy falling into the water. They had watched with binoculars and took photos. But did nothing.

As one ponders such evil, the realization dawns that to say one is “anti-Communist” does not quite cut it. 

And here is where Solzhenitsyn’s insight is helpful: “Communism has managed to persuade all of us that these concepts [good and evil] are old-fashioned and laughable. But if we are to be deprived of the concepts of good and evil, what will be left? Nothing but the manipulation of one another. We will sink to the status of animals.”

I forget who said it, but after the fall of the Berlin Wall, “Communism” was said to have disappeared, except in the faculty lounges of American [and Western] universities. That was good for a chuckle. But no one chuckles now, as we see the product of those faculty lounges in generations of students and careerists who laugh at the concepts of right and wrong, good and evil. They do not acknowledge that there is a God Who will not be mocked and Whose law is the standard by which we and they will be judged one day.

Meanwhile, our own country sees our city streets and highways consumed with rage and hatred, manifesting themselves in murder and mayhem.

Solzhenitsyn would tell us to not make Communism “appear as though [it] were something original, fundamental”. To say one is “anti-Communist” is to make Communism one’s point of departure.

He went on to say that the primary, the eternal concept is humanity. I believe he would not quibble with me as I modify his assertion a bit: the eternal concept is Truth. And Truth recognizes the reality of humanity as made in the image of God. I know he would not quibble because elsewhere he urged us to “not live by lies”, but rather to live by and for Truth.

So, we can say, that to be “against Communism is to be for humanity”. To reject this inhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a human being. “It is a protest of our souls against those who would have us forget the concepts of good and evil.”

So as you see the detritus of Communism throughout the 20th Century and into our own; as you see it manifested on our own streets, by different names but the same godlessness and hatred and desire to destroy our own social order; as you confront folks who downplay the evil or who seek to finesse their arguments to in effect obfuscate the very real nefariousness of the lies being hurled at us; just remember: you are for humanity and therefore you are against them.

Cetin Mert (May 11, 1970 – May 11, 1975)

East German guards retrieving the boy’s body from the Spree River

East German guards remove the body of Peter Fechter who spent his last 50 minutes on earth pleading for help.