Berlin Wall Crumbling : Germans Begin Dismantling Sections for 18 Exits : Huge Cheers Go Up as Bulldozer Arrives

East German border guards began dismantling sections of the Berlin Wall today, just a day after Communist authorities threw open the nation’s prison-like frontiers and more than 100,000 citizens poured across to the West.

Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher of West Germany told a crowd of about 20,000 people outside West Berlin’s City Hall that 18 holes would be made in the 9-foot-high wall, starting in the evening.

A portion of the wall at the famed Potsdamer Platz will be torn down during the weekend, Genscher said. At times, his voice was drowned out by cheers from the crowd. Genscher said he was told of the plans by East German officials.

Later, one witness said soldiers were astride the wall at Eberswalde Street, due to open as a new crossing Saturday, and were unscrewing sections.

About 50 East Germans watched in amazement in the darkened side street next to the main sport stadium in East Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district. One family wrenched a border warning sign free and took it as a souvenir.

A huge cheer went up from the crowd, which was growing by the minute, as an army bulldozer arrived to clear away sections of the concrete wall that was built in an overnight operation 28 years ago to keep East Germans in.

As the wall was coming down, East Germany’s Communist Party sacked four officials from the ruling Politburo and launched a broad investigation of “gross mistakes” made under ousted party boss Erich Honecker.

The party unveiled a package of reforms including free elections, changes in the economy and parliamentary scrutiny of the feared security forces.

The policy-making Central Committee, ending an astonishing three-day session, issued a detailed “action program” to be discussed by party members and others across the country before approval.

Also today, East German Interior Minister Friedrich Dickel said Thursday’s removal of travel restrictions is permanent.

“The new travel regulation is not a temporary measure,” Dickel told East German television. “It is permanent and will be the foundation of a new travel law.”

Earlier, former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, mayor of West Berlin when the wall was built in 1961, called for the wall to be demolished.

“Tear the wall down!” Brandt said in spontaneous comments to a group of young people who danced and cheered with thousands of others at the Brandenburg Gate on the western side of the Wall.

Brandt made a surprise visit to the wall and later addressed a rally at the West Berlin Town Hall, where West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl also spoke.

Police said that at least 100,000 people from all over East Germany crossed into West Berlin on Friday and that thousands more were flooding crossing points opened late this evening.

More than 225,000 East Germans have fled to the West this year in frustration over austere Communist rule in their homeland, and protests by millions last month fueled East Berlin’s worst crisis since the founding of the state in 1949.

Kohl, in his address, told thousands of cheering Berliners that West and East Germany belonged together and had to work for a common future.

“We are and will remain one nation and we belong together,” he said. “Step by step we must find the way to our common future.”

Kohl called on East Berlin’s leadership to give up its monopoly on power and allow free elections.

“Give up your power monopoly, clear the way,” said Kohl, who broke off a trip to Poland to rush to West Berlin.

West German government sources said Kohl was seeking an urgent meeting with East German leader Egon Krenz to discuss East Germany’s political crisis.

The Bonn leader wanted a face-to-face session with Krenz before he resumed his visit to Poland Saturday, they said.

The sources said officials were trying to set a time for the meeting, which would cap a week of unprecedented change in East Germany and in its relations with the West.

“People in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) have a right to free and secret elections and a free press and political parties,” Kohl said. “Our fellow countrymen are fighting for these rights and we are fully behind them.”

Kohl said Bonn was ready to help East Germans in all aspects of their lives. “This is our duty to the unity of the German nation,” he said.

Legions of ecstatic East Germans without visas flocked through the Wall to West Berlin and other crossing points during the day in a surge of joy at their new-found freedom to travel.

They took a wide-eyed look around well-stocked stores, spent “welcome money” provided by West Germany and joined in celebrations with overjoyed West Germans.

Some sat on top of the once-feared concrete wall erected by East Germany to prevent its people flooding West.

Then most of them went back home--evidently justifying the embattled Communist leadership’s Thursday night gamble of trying to defuse protest by ending exit restrictions.