I would like to he so strong, but when I am alone I can't--forgive me this misfortune, you must not lose your courage. Be strong for two for yourself and for me. I love you, because I married you. Elizabeth"

But in spite of all the promises of being allowed to go to the West and get married by the Secret Police, Elizabeth and I, the "enslaved" and the "enslaver," were to go to a socialist work camp.

My lawyer Vogel didn't get to see the indictment until a week before the trial, but only advised me to "get a good night's sleep." He didn't see any point in hearing my story since he had seen all the testimony I had signed for the Secret Police. When I pointed out that the Secret Police had neglected to include anything about the legal efforts that Elizabeth and I had made to get married, Vogel promised to bring that up as a question at the trial. But he warned me: "Don't contradict the (Secret) Police's testimony. I'm trying to help you and Elizabeth." And he said, "Don't worry about all the political terminology (slave trade, etc.), they always like to give high sentences to foreigners so they can show mercy later." Although Vogel showed up late to the trial, he did get the question in, but after I had listed the first three ways Elizabeth and I had tried to get married legally, the judge, obviously hearing this for the first time, cut me off; Vogel leaped out of his chair objecting, but the judge refused to admit the evidence that any Western agent and slave trader would try to marry the woman he was kidnapping and he promptly adjourned the trial. Before I got in points four-through-seven I was being hustled down the backstairs in handcuffs and into the rolling coffin.

The next day that state's attorney demanded that I be sentenced to two-and-one-half years, and in spite of Vogel's convincing defense that I didn't even belong under the Slave-trade paragraph, and that at most I should be remonstrated for giving Elizabeth escape tips and that on one in the West had put me up to it, the indictment stood. In my last word before the judge and two-man jury I simply told them that I took all the blame for anything that I or Elizabeth might have done, but that there was no intent to injure the German Democratic Republic, and that I simply loved Elizabeth and was determined to keep her with me always. But after a two-day adjournment, the judge upheld the sentences--there would be no paroles, and all time was to be served in a work camp. Two and one-half years for me, two years and nine months for Elizabeth, and four years for Jack Strickland for his alleged role in Brigitte Heider's escape.

The sentences were handed down along with some remarks which demonstrated that I was hostile to and not in agreement with security measures involved in building the Wall; viz., I had attended a speech given by Robert Kennedy in West Berlin in 1961 when the Wall was put up. Walter Cronkite of CBS telecast the sentences given us the very same night, but the only witness at the secret trial wasn't talking about the story behind the sentences--he was Major Hans Fuggeman of the East German Secret Police sitting alone in the rows of empty benches to make sure none of us decided to bring the true story of Secret Police interrogations onto the stenographic trial transcripts at the eleventh hour.

At one point the Secret Police seemed as if they were willing to honor their promises to recognize the human rights of Elizabeth and me to marry and come to America. On Dec.2, 1969, my birthday, my secret service interrogator, Lieutenant X, whom we dubbed Doctor Strangelove, tried the soft line, let me set a chicken dinner with him in the interrogation room, allowed me to write a letter to Elizabeth in her cell (which she answered) and promised me that I could visit her. I waited for over a year for that promise to be kept and when it was not I went into a work strike at the labor camp which nearly ended in the death of myself and Jack Strickland.

On July 4, Jack Strickland and I went on a work strike at the labor camp where we had been building elevator switches for eight months. It started innocently with me demanding to see Elizabeth and Jack demanding a re-trial. But it was soon escalated out of hand by the prison authorities. I was first threatned with and then put into solitary confinement for punishment on bread and water. The cell contained nothing but a wooden stool and a bucket for excrement. At night time the stool could be exchanged for straw mattresses (this was the "de-luxe" cell). I refused to eat the bread and the prison authorities escalated it all the way--no water! I went two days and two nights without touching a drop of water or any food and was going through a third. Jack Strickland declared a solidarity strike on the second day. So it was all the way to the death unless they broke our wills.

I decided to let them do what they wanted with my body; until I saw Elizabeth I would not move. At five in the morning some guards came in and when I wouldn't stand up straight, threw me on the floor where I remained in a catatonic state. After four back-breaking hours shivering on the cell floor I was carried on the shoulders of two guards to a Secret Polic Captain for interrogation. I remained limp except for the cold spasms running through my body while they dumped alcohol and ice water over me to revive me, all the while making remarks about the war in Vietnam and the "world gendarmes of the U.S." Finally I was carried to another partly bare cell with a toilet where my pants were ripped off to give me a shot to tranquilize me. The faucet on the toilet was dismantled to prevent me from sucking up any water from the toilet during the hunger strike. These were the same guards who had recently passed out copies of the East paper "Young World" (Junge Welt) which told the story of Angela Davis, American communist, who drank only fruit juice during her hunger strike because prison officials wouldn't give in to her demands. I could see these guys weren't going to be serving me any Minute Maid Orange Juice.

My thoughts raced back to the time when my Secret Police interrogator told me: "We don't have any reason to dig your grave here in the German Democratic Republic." He walked behind me and ran his finger dagger-style along the nape of my neck--"unless you force us to," he added. So maybe this was it. It looked as though the Secret Police was going all the way; so all the carefully devised plans Jack and I had made seemed to be headed towards death. We had only planned bread and water strikes (alarm stage one), unless put into solitary, where we would drink only water (alarm stage two), but the prison officials had themselves chosen to push us into alarm stage three--no food or water, which meant death under ten days unless they stuck some kind of tubes in us. But even if they put us on some crazy kind of nourishing machine, which we fondly dubbed the Robotron in our plans for counter-attack, we decided to stay on the tubes until our sentences ran out and we were carried across the border like dehydrated prunes. If one of us got back to the West first, we agreed that he would tell the East Secret Police the code words "Black Beauty" since that would be the only way they could get the other off the tubes and back onto alarm stage one--bread and water--until the first guy could get the story of the treatment of ourselves and Elizabeth to the world, at which point the Secret Police wouldn't want to send any coffins with corpses out of their pris ns over such trivial points as seeing one's fiancee or getting a retrial.

But during the third day of our march towards self-destruction, a dramatic change came. The prison officials backed off and gave in. We were rushed up to Berlin where Wolfgang Vogel sped us James Bond style in his pastel blue Mercedes across a secret checkpoint to transfer us to black State Department limousines with British military escorts. We had been saved by the signing of the Berlin Pact! A week after starving and thirsting on the dimly lit floors of Bautzen work camp, we were heading towards the nearest Hofbrauhaus to get rid of that thirst with a couple of mugs of dark Bavarian beer.

But the end of one story is only the beginning of another bigger one. Elizabeth remains in her work camp, the least guilty and the most punished of all involved. One of the last times I saw her I gave her Marvin Gaye's record, Ain't no Mountain High enough, which goes:

"There ain't no mountain high enough

ain't no valley low enough

ain't no river wide enough

to keep me from gettin' to you, Babe."

And no mountain, not even the Berlin wall, is high enough to keep us apart. Elizabeth yearns to be here with me. If each of us lets his voice be heard, she will be here. There are two ways of doing this: one is simply to dial the Cambridge number 864-2180. My recorded voice will answer and ask you to give your name and town and say "Please Free Elizabeth." Dozens of messages can be recorded on the same phone call. You can also drop a post card in the mail that says the same ("Please Free Elizabeth") to: Free Elizabeth, P.O. Box 32, Cambridge 02139. The cards will be delivered to Elizabeth in her East German work camp and the calls will be played on West German television over the Iron Curtain to let Elizabeth know that she hasn't been forgotten