Communism’s Legacy in Berlin — Just Don’t Use the “C” Word

It was a sunny day in August, 1952 when Stephen Wechsler swam across the Danube river near Linz, Austria toward the Soviet side — unlike most others who swam towards the West in order to defect. He had no shoes, his shirt was torn, and there was nobody on the other side of the Iron Curtain to receive him. “I started looking for the Soviets,” Wechsler recalled. “I didn’t find them actually.” Wechsler, a Harvard graduate from New York City, was fleeing prosecution from the American military for not reporting his membership in about a dozen left-wing organizations when he signed up for service — including the U.S. Communist Party. McCarthy-era laws threatened to imprison him for five years for every day he didn’t report his leftist affiliation. “I thought, ‘What? Military prison now, in the 1950s?’ That was dangerous,” Wechsler said. “That’s why I decided to leave, to flee really. <a href="https://medium.com/berlin-beyond-borders/communisms-legacy-in-berlin-just-don-t-use-the-c-word-991b7a3efb4">Website</a>