This is a momentous day.
Today, exactly 25 years ago, on the 9th
of November 1989, the biggest, most heinous blemish on the European
landscape came down. Dismantled by a jubilant crowd, consisting
mostly of the young.
The Wall, dividing the East and the
West was demolished inch by concrete inch and then slabs of concrete
fell crashing to earth. Barbed wires were snipped in two, all along
this violent, cynical, barbarous demarcation line.
I say „violent“ since a great many
people who attempted to cross this line from the East to the West,
were shot and killed by border guards of their own nationality and
culture, sharing the history, good and bad, of their common ancestry.
I say „cynical“ because the
announced purpose of the wall was to keep out possible invaders from
the West, when the leaders of the East Block countries, knew well
that the concrete, the barbed wire, the watch towers, the buried land
mines, the armed guards with German Sheppard dogs on a running line,
they all were in place to prevent their own citizens from escaping to
the West.
I say „barbarous“ because there was
nothing which might remind you of a civilized leadership, but of a
Moskau inspired, directed and supported gang of criminal oppressors
of their own people.
When the Russian leaders became less
and less the political image of Stalin, Erich Honecker stayed the
course with stubborn brutality.
In January of 1989 he proudly announced
that „the Wall would last for a hundred years or more, unless the
underlying reasons for its existence would cease to exist.“
By „the underlying reasons“ he
meant the existence of the hated „capitalist Western world“,
which, he believed, threatened his workers' paradise.
The underlying reasons would indeed
cease to exist, but fortunately not those envisioned by Mr. Honecker.
The disintegration of the Communist
state structures happened not only in East Germany, but also in the
Check Republic, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. All along the course
of „the iron curtain“ the people revolted and forced the
communist leadership to step down.
Check in tomorrow, when some additional thoughts will be written by
Bertstravels
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