#FlashbackFriday: As the Wall was Built, the Berlin Exchange was ‘Calm Symbol in Storm’s Eye’

(Updated to correct closing date of Berlin Exchange.)

Sixty years ago today, on Aug. 13, 1961, construction began on the Berlin Wall. As that Cold War barrier was built, the Berlin Exchange (pictured above in an early ’70s photo) was, as an Exchange Post headline put it, the “calm symbol in the storm’s eye.”

The Exchange had operated in Berlin since 1945, supporting Americans who served behind the Iron Curtain. The first PX there was established a few weeks after the end of World War II to sell chocolate, soap and cigarettes.

During the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift, trucks from the West Berlin Exchange brought food and drinks to pilots on the tarmacs so they could quickly return to delivering 9,000 tons of food, fuel and medical supplies to local residents.

After construction began on the wall, President Kennedy called up thousands of troops to Berlin, and the European Exchange Service (EES) provided on-the-spot service to the U.S. Army Berlin garrison. Mobile exchange vans from EES served troops stationed at the wall.

Glenn T. Ino, executive of the Berlin PX, rotated back to the United States just after the wall went up. Ino, who had been in Europe 17 years, 15 of them with EES in Germany, was matter-of-fact about the PX.

“Aside from the fact that we operate in a highly publicized area, running an exchange in West Berlin is no different than anywhere else,” Ino said.

With the fall of the wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s-early 1990s, many of the Cold War-era installations and their exchanges closed, including the Berlin Exchange, which closed a few years after the wall fell.

Today, the Army & Air Force Exchange Service has more than a dozen stores and facilities in Germany. The closest modern Exchange to Berlin is in Wiesbaden, more than 350 miles away.

Sources: Exchange Post archives, Exchange History Flickr.