While we were not there for the monumental event of seeing Berlin reunited, we did visit the Berlin Wall almost 20 years ago.
Even then, the magnitude of it all was overwhelming. This is what I wrote, after visiting the Haus Am Checkpoint Charlie Museum, on Sept. 18, 2000. "It is disturbing to know this history. How it could have happened in the first place? The Wall went up on Aug. 13, 1961 and the museum, sharing all its horrors, opened the following year. We saw an hour long film detailing the events that led to the sealing off of the city, through the tearing down of the wall 28 years later (30 years ago today). It was an emotionally moving experience. In school, our older son is learning about our American Constitution, Bill of Rights and our Country's fight for freedom. It really brought to light what our founding fathers were trying to do all those years ago, preventing this tragedy of just a few years ago happening in our own country. Very poignant!!! Our younger son was enthralled with the escapees' techniques: tunnels; hot air balloons; secret compartments: in cars, concert speakers, and suitcases; suspended cables that they slid on; homemade handheld submarines and the just pure desire to go west that would cause them to jump the border gates, risking death or imprisonment, just to return to love ones."
On this date in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, two years after President Reagan famously said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!" Reporter Peter Jennings, at the time, describes the event as “perhaps the most important announcement made in Central Europe since the end of World War II, certainly since the wall went up in 1961.” Definitely an occasion worth remembering and a place visited worth sharing.
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