Growing Up in West Berlin During the Cold War
“It felt like we were living in a zoo,” says Elke Ertle who grew up in West Berlin during the Cold War. “As we went about our daily lives, the world watched us from the other side of the 12-foot-high barrier that encircled us.” In conjunction with the Coffee and Books program at the Santee Library, Elke shares snippets from her memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom. Rather than an account of escaping across the Berlin Wall under gun fire, Walled-In is a coming-of-age story. It focuses on the city’s Cold War history and the challenges of living in West Berlin at that time, all seen through the eyes of a teenager. She talks about what it was like to grow up on the frontier of the East/West divide, what it was like to grow up in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, what it was like to grow up behind parental walls that were even higher than the brick-and-mortar wall and the lessons she learned from the experiences.