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In Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl's Journey to Freedom, J. Elke Ertle chronicles the first 21 years of her life growing up in West Berlin during the Cold War. Located one hundred miles from the closest West German border, West Berlin was nothing more than a tiny western island in the middle of a large Communist sea. But by the same token, it also represented the front line of the Cold War divide.Walled-In probes the concepts of freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. cooperation, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal
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J. Elke Ertle was born and raised in West Berlin following World War II, a time when the city was the focus of an escalating Cold War between East and West. During the first twenty-one years of her life, she lived with her mother and father in the British sector of the city and was known by her first name, Jutta. In the late 1940s, her family braved the Berlin Blockade, surviving by and large on account of the American-conceived Berlin Airlift. More than a decade later, when Jutta was a teenager, her family endured many hours, days, and weeks of petrifying uncertainty in the wake of the construction of the Berlin Wall. Overnight, the city had been split into two and rumors ran amok. Jutta, along with the rest of the population of West Berlin, feared for her future and her freedom.
Retired from employment in the public sector, Elke now lives in San Diego with Burch, her husband of four decades. She holds a masters degree in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from San Diego State University and a Certificate in Fitness and Exercise Science from the University of California, San Diego. She teaches group exercise classes and enjoys reading, writing, dancing, hiking, tennis, gardening, cooking, and crafts. Elke is a contributing author to “The Real F.M. Urban,” published in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, and to two anthologies.