Berlin wall remembered after 25 years

By Patrick Whatley

Slug: Berlin Wall; Anniversary; Blitz

Date: Nov. 7, 2014

 

Twenty-five years ago this month the Berlin Wall fell, leaving in its wake the end of the Cold War.

Its demise is still remembered by some German-Canadians who reflect on their lives at the time when the Iron Curtain separated East and West Germany.

 

The wall was raised, almost overnight, in 1961 because of the vast numbers of East Germans defecting to West Germany. At the time the German people were led to believe that its presence was only temporary, said Christina Duenk, 65, a German expatriate.

“Before the [Berlin] Wall went up Germany was Germany. You had the freedom to go where ever you wanted,” said Duenk. “Overnight, the other side put barbed wire up and they put soldiers up, all of a sudden people who were over there could not come on this side and people on this side could not go over there.”

 

The Iron Curtain was a symbolic, ideological and physical boundary which divided Europe between the Allies in the west and the Soviet Bloc in the east. West Germany followed the capitalist ideology, while East Germany followed the philosophy of communism. The city of Berlin was completely surrounded in the east by the Soviets, but it was divided between east and west by the Berlin Wall. The two contrasting philosophies lead many East Berliners to defect to West Berlin.

“Every day in the news you saw people that went in to the trunks of cars, they used to swim, they used to run. They used to hang in the barbed wire dead because (the solders) were shooting them while they were going across,” said Duenk.

“The soldiers could not shoot them once they got to the other side, once they reached the west side,” said Lori Abt, 74, a German-Canadian who lived in Germany during this time. “We lived about 20 kilometers from the border, and the reason that my dad wanted to get away was because he was afraid that they were going to keep getting closer. He said that’s when we were going to immigrate to Canada. We were afraid all of the time.”

The fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the factors that subsequently lead to the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1991, which toppled the Soviet Bloc. The German people celebrated and rejoiced, but the situation was far from perfect, said Duenk.

“There were young people over there who lived in 25 years of communism. The German government wanted to compensate,” said Duenk. “The German government spent a lot of money trying to provide compensation to the East Germans. The East Germans got first choice for apartment or housing, they got the first choice of work, so the West Germans said ‘what the heck … they’re taking all our jobs away.’”

 

The Berlin Wall is a deep scar on the face of German history. Germany has since recovered from the split between the East and West and risen to be a strong economic and cultural hub in Europe. The 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is now a great celebration and solemn time of remembrance for Germans and German-Canadians alike.