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This week marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the eventual collapse of communism. I was not in Berlin that November night in 1989 when jubilant East and West Germans danced atop the wall. But months earlier I had been in East Berlin and had a chilling glimpse of life behind the Iron Curtain.

Today, students study the Cold War in history books, but millions of us lived through that frightening era. As former Secretary of State James Baker, who served in President George H.W. Bush's cabinet, told CNN this week: "In the Cold War, we went to bed every night fearing the potential of nuclear annihilation."

The Berlin Wall, erected in 1961 to prevent East Germans from moving to free and prosperous West Germany, was a stark symbol of the Cold War. When the wall fell, the Iron Curtain crumbled.

Back then, I watched on television as curious East Germans drove their shabby little cars across the border into West Berlin. They stared wide-eyed at the bright lights and stores bulging with food, especially bananas, they hadn't tasted in years. I kept hoping I'd glimpse a young East German woman I'd met.

Months earlier, I'd been traveling in West Germany with a group of American journalists. The day finally came when we ventured into communist East Berlin.

All Westerners crossing the border remember those haunting moments at checkpoints. East German border guards glared at you as if you were a spy who should be shipped to the gulag. Police states used checkpoints to inspire fear in you.

East Berlin was a bleak place that snowy day. The streets were almost deserted; shops were closed; the city echoed with emptiness. We found a tiny restaurant beside a canal and stopped for lunch. The lunch, a thin stew with gummy rice dumped on top, was typical of the shoddy food in the Soviet bloc.

In the restaurant, East Berliners stared at us suspiciously. Our English, our clothes, our cameras made us suspect. I later learned that East Germans, indeed all people in the Soviet bloc, were afraid to talk to foreigners, fearing the secret police was watching them.

Which is why my encounter with a stranger, a young East German girl in her 20s, took courage on her part. We stood in front of a mirror combing our hair in the restaurant's ladies' room. We were alone. She struck up a conversation in German; I responded in English. She hesitated for a moment, then spoke English.

According to my notes that day, the conversation went like this:

"Where are you from?" she asked.

"America," I replied.

She looked surprised. Perhaps she'd never met an American. Her voice dropped to a whisper. It was unsafe for her to talk to foreigners.

In a hushed voice, she plied me with questions about life on the other side of the Berlin Wall. She had always wanted to go there, she said wistfully. From East Berlin, where street lights were dimmed at night, she could see the glittering lights of West Berlin in the distance.

"Are you free to travel anywhere?" she asked. I nodded. "We're not. We're not free," she said. "We're trapped."

She said she lived in a small East German town near the Polish border. She wanted to attend medical school, but was "assigned" to work in a dairy plant. That's the way the system worked. The government assigned jobs, she said.

"Things are changing in the Soviet Union under President Gorbachev," I said, trying to sound optimistic. "Maybe they'll change here."

"Not here," she replied. "They probably never will."

Her hopelessness was depressing. She was a prisoner in her own country.

Suddenly the door swung open and a man, a waiter, entered the ladies room. He eyed us suspiciously and walked out. He was probably a secret police informer. It was no longer safe to talk.

Within months, the Berlin Wall fell on that night in 1989.

I like to think she was among the thousands of East Germans who, 20 years ago, stepped into West Berlin for their first taste of freedom.

Rosemary Roberts writes a column on alternate Fridays. E-mail: rmroberts@triad.rr.com.