Day 14: A Glimpse of the Horrid Past

Today was a serious, somber day for me. My peers and I were given a walking tour of Berlin and information regarding the Nazi past and the occupation by the Soviets. Seeing with my own eyes the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Berlin Wall caused me to contemplate, to wonder at the evil that existed not so long ago.

Our tour guide was a charismatic young woman originally from Canada who has been living in Berlin for the last six years. I was impressed with her wealth of knowledge and appreciative of her blunt accounts of the Nazi and Soviet atrocities.

The Berlin Wall was, in reality, more complex than a single wall and a bit of barbed wire. It consisted of a wall enclosing all of West Berlin so that the East Germans could no longer go to West Berlin and receive asylum and air transport to West Germany. The wall itself consisted of two walls: the first wall if successfully scaled was followed by a strip of nails and an area not known as "no man's land" but "the dead zone" because this is where you would die if you tried to cross the wall barrier. Trip wires, land mines, soldier patrols, and barbed wire were used in this dead zone. If somehow one managed to cross this area, there was a second cement and steel reinforced wall to overcome.

Now, all that remains are scattered ruins of this wall. Where the "dead zone" once was are thoroughfares and buildings of a thriving, unified city. A line of bricks or cobbles is all that marks where the wall of separation once stood. The fall of communism and the Berlin Wall I attribute largely to the unwavering faith and determination of one man: President Ronald Reagan. On 12 June 1987 he said,

"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" (watch the video here)

And it came down.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jew of Europe was stark and somber. The grid of rectangles sits atop a museum of facts and biographical information of victims. The rows of the columns you see demonstrate being engulfed in hopelessness, but that we, unlike the Jews, can see hope, a way out, at the end of every path.

Without going into more details about the Holocaust, I provide this photo and ask the reader to not shun his responsibilty to face the gruesome facts of history.