The Wall Takes Its Final Victims

The wall, that cold, tyrannical monument to a divided Germany, has claimed its last victims, but ones most suited to its cruel purpose. Egon Krenz, the last hard-line Communist ruler of the East, was sentenced by a Berlin court to six years in prison on charges of being responsible for the deaths of fellow Germans attempting to scale the wall to escape to freedom in the West. Two other members of the Politburo received three-year sentences.

Hundreds died trying to cross the wall over the 28 years it divided Berlin. The collapse of the Soviet empire spelled its demise--the concrete parapets sledgehammered into rubble by Berliners who could never bear its grim presence, the sight of gun towers, the death strips.

Krenz, the Politburo officer in charge of security, succeeded Erich Honecker in the last days of East German rule. He left the court claiming innocence in the shootings, saying the Russians made him do it. One leg of his defense was President Ronald Reagan’s dramatic 1987 demand, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” “He did not cry, Honecker or Krenz, tear down the wall!” the defendant wailed.

That didn’t wash in the German court. The 60-year-old Krenz was the leader as the curtain fell, and the judge declared of his and Honecker’s rule, “The defense of the border was placed above human life.” And so closes the book on the wall that was built to keep its people in, not its enemies out.