The Wall was built in 1961, closing off access to West Germany to stop people from the communist East from fleeing. The roughly finished concrete and barbed-wire structure became a potent Cold War symbol of what former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once described as an Iron Curtain dividing Europe. The fall of the Wall has shown us that dreams can come true, Merkel said at the main memorial site for the Wall on Bernauer Strasse. Nothing has to stay the way it is, however big the hurdles are. In an iconic moment that has come to symbolize the end of the Cold War, on the evening of Nov. 9, 1989, an East German announcement that it was easing travel restrictions to West Germany prompted a gathering at the Wall. East German border guards, apparently confused by their orders, allowed thousands of East Berliners to pass through a checkpoint to the West for the first time since the Wall was erected. Soon after, crowds began physically dismantling the structure.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 02:37:31 +0000
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