柏林墙倒塌25周年，那些逝去的生命

On Berlin Wall Anniversary, Somber Notes Amid Revelry

柏林墙倒塌25周年，那些逝去的生命

BERLIN — It was the morning after the best party ever, the tumult and joy that marked the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989. After 28 years, East Berliners were giddy with marvel that they could now visit the West.

柏林——这是1989年11月9日柏林墙倒塌后的第二天早上，有史以来最好的派对，以及它带来的喧嚣和欣喜刚刚结束。28年过去了，东柏林人为自己终于能够前往西柏林而感到前所未有的惊喜。

Günter Taubmann felt different, as if, he said, “I am in the wrong movie.” Eight years earlier, his only child, Thomas, had been killed trying to cross the wall, one of 138 people who died at the barrier erected by the Communists in 1961 to stop Germans streaming out of the poor, repressive East.

金特·陶布曼(Günter Taubmann)却有着不一样的感受。他说，就像“进错了电影”。八年前，他的独子托马斯(Thomas)在试图越过柏林墙时遇害，是在那里丧命的 138名死者之一。1961年，为了阻止德国人大量逃离贫穷专制的东德，共产党竖起了这道围墙。

Now, someone at work had been to the West and back during that magical night, and was telling the tale. Mr. Taubmann’s Communist colleagues professed to be exultant over the end of the order they had long espoused. Workmates who had not mourned Thomas at the time of his death were suddenly solicitous.

到了此时，却有同事在这个神奇的夜晚从西柏林往返，并讲述着自己的见闻。对于他们长期拥护的秩序的终结，这些共产党同志展现出一副兴高采烈的样子。在托马斯去世时并未表示哀悼的那些同事，突然关心了起来。

“I didn’t know what they wanted from me, and then they started, ‘What bad luck! Your son could have waited,’ ” Mr. Taubmann recounted, his voice edgy with sarcasm. “I am normally a calm person, but there I got in such a fury. I simply threw them all out. ‘Just get out of my room.’ ”

“我不知道他们想从我这里得到什么，他们直接开始说，‘多倒霉啊!你儿子本来可以等等的，’”陶布曼回忆着，声音里带着讽刺的味道。“我通常是一个冷静的人，但在那种时候，我变得怒气冲冲，干净利落地把他们都赶走了。‘赶紧从我房间里滚出去。’”

Once they were gone, “I poured out my heart” to those colleagues who had braved the intimidation of the secret police to attend Thomas’s funeral.

他们一走，“我就向一些同事倾吐心声”。他们曾不顾秘密警察的恐吓，前去参加了托马斯的葬礼。

For most of Germany, Nov. 9 is a day to celebrate not just the opening of the wall but what came after: integration of East and West and the rise of a united and prosperous Germany that now helps lead Europe.

对大多数德国人而言，11月9日这一天值得庆祝的不仅仅是柏林墙的开放，还有随后发生的事情：东德和西德的融合，以及一个如今引领欧洲的统一而繁荣的德国的崛起。

But for some Germans it also summons memories of the East Germany that was a state of informers and suspicions, public rigidity and private despair — none more so than the families and friends of those killed at the Berlin Wall, for whom the anniversary of its fall is tarnished by tragedy, pocked with the holes where a child, a spouse or sibling once was.

不过，对部分德国人而言，这一天也唤起了有关东德的记忆。那是一个充斥着告密和猜疑的国家，公共领域僵化，个人充满绝望。对那些有家人和朋友在柏林墙遇害的人而言，这种回忆尤其深刻。在他们那里，对柏林墙倒塌的庆祝因为悲剧而黯然失色，让他们想起了失去子女、配偶或兄弟姐妹的创伤。

To trace the victims is to delve behind the glamour and groove that is modern Berlin, deep into meticulously neat gardens and homes where most Germans live their ordered lives. The pain still sears, more than five decades after the first victims died, and a quarter-century after millions of German families divided by the Cold War came back together.

要追踪这些受害人，需要探究当代柏林种种魅力和美妙的背后，深入到完美无瑕的花园和住宅的内里。大部分德国人如今在这样的地方过着井然有序的生活。然而，在离第一批受害人遇难已过去50多年，离数百万因冷战分离的德国家庭团圆已过去四分之一世纪后，痛苦的烙印依然挥之不去。

By far the majority of those killed trying to breach the fortified, 96-mile barrier were young men in their teens or 20s. Many more were tempted to take the risk in the first years than toward the end. Contrary to myths of heroism and betrayal attached variously by West and East to each escape, few who fled or tried to had a purely political motive.

在试图越过那道96英里(155公里)长的坚固围墙却遇害的人当中，绝大部分是一二十岁的男性青少年。受到冒险念头诱惑的人，在最初几年远比最后几年多。不同于西德和东德为每一次逃离附上的英雄或背叛的宣传性说辞，真正逃离或试图行动的人中，并没有多少抱着纯粹的政治动机。

Thomas Taubmann was 26, divorced, a college dropout who was drinking too much when, on the grim weekend of Dec. 12-13, 1981, as martial law was declared in Poland and as East and West German leaders met, he tried to scale the wall at a spot where East and West rail tracks ran parallel. His parents, interrogated separately by the police, never heard the exact truth, but Thomas was apparently crushed by a train.

在1981年12月12日和13日那个阴郁的周末，26岁的托马斯·陶布曼试图在东德和西德铁轨并行的一个地方翻越柏林墙。他曾在大学期间退学，当时已经离异，并且染上了酗酒的毛病。他行动的当口，波兰宣布了戒严令，东德和西德领导人在举行会晤。后来，托马斯的父母被警方单独审问。他们从未听到过确切的真相，但托马斯似乎是遭到了一列火车的碾压。

His mother, Elisabeth, a nurse and a lay judge at an East Berlin court where Thomas was due to appear on shoplifting charges, never got over it. “She was sick at heart, and she died of it,” said her husband, now a sprightly 80.

他的母亲伊丽莎白(Elisabeth)是一名护士，同时在东柏林一家法院担任非专业法官。这家法院也是托马斯本应该接受入店行窃指控的地方。伊丽莎白从来没有从儿子的死中走出来。“她得了心脏病，因为这个过世了，”她的丈夫说。他现年80岁，精神矍铄。

After his wife’s death in 1999, Mr. Taubmann requested the file of the secret police. Only then did he read the note that Thomas had left for “Dear Mummy! Dear Daddy!” in which the son intuited that his father had the stronger nerves, and implored him “to help Mom over the hump.” Only then did the father know for sure that, without warning, his son had tried to escape.

在妻子1999年去世后，陶布曼先生提请查阅秘密警察的文件。直到那时，他才读到了托马斯为“亲爱的妈妈!亲爱的爸爸!”留下的信。儿子在信中料到父亲会更坚强，因此恳求他“帮助妈妈度过难关”。也是直到那时，这位父亲才确定地知道，儿子真的打算逃离，却没有告诉任何人。

As to what prompted Axel Hannemann to try, at 17, to cross the Spree River to West Berlin in June 1962, no one will ever know. His farewell note said he would reveal the motive “once I’ve made it.” Fifty-two years later, his only surviving sibling, Jürgen, seven years his senior, still tears up.

至于是什么促使17岁的阿谢尔·汉内曼(Axel Hannemann)在1962年6月计划穿过斯普雷河来到西柏林，将永远无人知晓。他在告别信中说，“我成功了之后”，会公开自己的动机。52年过去了，他唯一在世的手足、比他大七岁的哥哥于尔根(Jürgen)仍然泪流满面。

“It was completely senseless, what he did,” Jürgen Hannemann mused at his cottage near the family’s hometown, Cottbus. “I just can’t understand. We had a good relationship, and I loved him.”

“他做的事，太没有意义了，”于尔根·汉内曼在位于家乡科特布斯附近的自家小屋里若有所思地说。“我根本没法理解。我们关系很好。我爱他。”

Axel’s escape attempt occurred when the wall was not yet a year old and an object of Communist zeal. But eventually, Jürgen Hannemann said, the Stasi stopped interrogating friends from work, Axel’s dance lessons and his tennis club. Axel’s daring — jumping on a cargo ship headed for West Berlin, being discovered, then plunging into the Spree and getting shot in view of people on the western bank — receded into history.

阿谢尔试图逃脱时，柏林墙建成还不到一年，是共产主义者为之狂热的对象。于尔根·汉内曼说，最终史塔西不再审问阿尔谢的同事，还有他舞蹈课和网球俱乐部的朋友。阿谢尔的大胆行为——他跳上了一艘前往西柏林的货船，被人发现，随后跳入斯普雷河，在西岸人的注视下遭到射杀——成为了历史的尘埃。

The decades have softened the blow of loss, but during interviews over the past two months, each family still nursed bitterness — particularly that no border guard who shot their loved one received more than probation. Legal wrangling over whether there was a shoot-to-kill order for the wall’s heavily armed sentinels has spared the guards, not the victims.

几十年的岁月冲淡了失去亲人的打击，但从过去两个月的采访中可以看出，每个家庭仍然深藏着痛苦——尤其是因为，射杀他们亲人的边界警卫都没有受到比缓刑更严厉的惩罚。关于柏林墙荷枪实弹的哨兵是否接到了击毙命令的法律纠纷让这些士兵逃脱了责任，却并没有给受害者一个说法。

In Berlin these days, visitors engage in “wall tourism.” The American-Soviet border crossing known as Checkpoint Charlie has spawned constantly playing movies and a museum. In Bornholmer Strasse, where the wall first opened, an engraving that chronicles the events of Nov. 9, 1989, is on the bridge over the rails where Thomas Taubmann died.

如今在柏林，游客们可以体验一把“柏林墙旅游”。在美国和苏联占领区之间的关卡，也就是被称为“查理检查哨”的地方，经常播放影片，还建起了一座博物馆。在伯恩霍莫大街——柏林墙首先被打通的地方——一座桥上雕刻的碑文记载了1989年11月9日的活动。桥下的铁轨就是托马斯·陶布曼殒命的地方。

Günter Taubmann is not much for ceremony. He is delighted that he and his wife followed her instinct, and reached out after the tragedy to Thomas’s ex-wife and son, Björn, just 5 when his father was killed. This fall, a great-granddaughter started school.

金特·陶布曼并没有多少纪念的心思。他很高兴，自己和妻子听从了她的直觉，在悲剧发生后主动联系了托马斯的前妻和儿子比约恩(Björn)——父亲死时，他才五岁。今年秋天，他们的重孙女就要上学了。