Posted on 08/17/2009 10:11:01 AM PDT by Ebenezer
(English-language translation)
GERMANY - On the 48th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall, this capital today remembers all of its victims and protests against minimizing the history of the defunct German Democratic Republic (GDR).
The victims were remembered during a ceremony at the Chapel of Reconciliation in Berlin, which Mayor Klaus Wowereit and government delegate Marianne Birthler (the latter in charge of the documents of the GDR's Stasi secret political police) attended.
In the simple chapel located on Bernauer Street where the Wall stood, a candle burned in memory of the dead and a floral arrangement was placed.
Forty-eight years ago, on August 13, 1961, the GDR authorities, under orders from Council of State Chairman Walter Ulbricht, directed that the wall which separated Berliners for 28 years be raised.
On the occasion of the anniversary of this fateful date, Wowereit declared that "overcoming the past is a permanent duty".
Bernauer Street is considered a symbol of German division. On that Sunday during the summer of 1961, barbed wire that marked where the wall would rise was placed right in front of the façade of a residential building located on the street.
Residents of the building lived in East Berlin. However, in an act of desperation, they jumped from the building's windows which faced West Berlin in an attempt to cross to the other side.
And John F. (I am a jelly donut) Kennedy did nothing.
Thanks for the morning chuckle. “Berliner”, indeed.
While serving in the US Army in Germany from 1978-81, I visited Berlin twice and went to Bernauer Strasse on a tour during the first visit. Seeing The Wall from that perspective as well as near Brandenburg Gate is something I will never forget. Freedom is a precious gift and those who have not seen this with their own eyes have difficulty understanding what the absence of freedom really looks like.
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