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.