Yesterday, November 9, 2009, Germany celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a concrete barrier that separated West Berlin from the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). The communists built the wall to prevent their own people from “voting with their feet.”
The Allies divided Germany at the end of World War II, with the Soviet Union taking control of eastern Germany, except for a section of Berlin, Germany’s greatest city. June 24,1948, the communist government closed off West Berlin, attempting to force its 2 million residents to its will by stopping the flow of food, fuel, and other essential goods.
The United States responded two days later with an airlift of supplies. For more than a year that airlift remained one of the most dramatic ongoing stories in the Weekly Reader. Even when the communist government gave up and lifted the siege, it maintained a strict control over who and what went into and out of West Berlin. In 1961, it began enclosing West Berlin in a high concrete wall.
I remembered reading the dramatic stories about the Berlin Airlift in the Weekly Reader when I visited West Germany in October 1964. Two friends and I traveled across East Germany to West Berlin by train. Apparently the government limited the number of trains, for it was so crowded that we stood much of the way. Scowling conductors and guards checked and rechecked our papers.
We heard wonderful music and saw the exquisite bust of Nefertiti, but West Berlin—perhaps because a chilling rain fell almost constantly—seemed gray and bulky and self-obsessed. The fabled pre-war charm had vanished amid new buildings and heavy traffic and busy people.
Then we took a bus tour of East Berlin, going through the infamous Checkpoint Charlie. East Berlin made West Berlin look great. On the communist side we saw some bleak new Soviet-style cement apartment buildings, many blocks of unmaintained old buildings, rubble from buildings bombed during World War II, and little activity on the streets. The people looked drab, depressed, destitute. We were relieved to return West Berlin.
I hope there’s still a Weekly Reader to tell kids why everyone should celebrate the collapse of the Berlin Wall and of Soviet-imposed tyranny.
—Carolyn Mulford