It's been two decades since the Berlin Wall fell. The road
to freedom has been rocky, but it is hard to remember the awful
world that once existed: dreary, brutal, repressive
prison states extending from East Germany all the way to the
Pacific.
It turns out that West German intelligence collected East German
jokes as a measure of discontent behind the Wall. Laughter
was an important form of resistance.
The Daily Telegraph reports:
Among the jokes recorded in the files were:
Did East Germans originate from apes?
Impossible. Apes could never have survived on just two bananas
a year.
What would happen if the desert became communist?
Nothing for a while - and then there would be a sand shortage!
How do you double the value of a Trabant?
Answer: Fill it up with petrol.
And the regime reacted accordingly. Explains the Daily
Telegraph:
Thousands lost jobs, families and sometimes even their liberty
for poking fun at the worker's paradise.
On November 9 we all should raise a glass in remembrance of the
fall of the Wall.
About the Author
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and the Senior Fellow in International Religious Persecution at the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics (Crossway).
