25 years after the Berlin Wall was torn down: A Celebration of Freedom

Don't let them tell you the Berlin Wall fell. It was torn down.

Tearing down the Berlin Wall

25 years ago today the Berlin Wall began to be physically torn down. It was a great day for freedom and the triumph of long years of nonviolent resistance throughout Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall had been constructed beginning on August 13, 1961 with barbed wire fence followed by a 100 mile wall and more than 300 watch towers to spot and shoot escapees and the East German communists called it the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart." Minefields were laid in some sectors.

In Germany, this was not a passive top down process or the Berlin Wall falling as a result of gravity and inertia. It bears repeating that it was torn down by courageous Germans.

Remember that between 1961 and the very year it was torn down at least 136 Germans were extrajudicially executed by the East German border guards just for trying to cross the Berlin Wall to freedom. There is The Berlin Wall Museum that offers a complete listing of the 136 known victims with details about them and their deaths.

Chris Gueffroy shot and killed crossing the Berlin Wall February 5, 1989

One of the last victims, Chris Gueffroy was born on June 21, 1968 and shot dead on February 5, 1989 trying to cross on the Britzer Zweigkanal, near the small garden colonies “Harmonie“ and “Sorgenfrei” on the sector border between Berlin-Treptow and Berlin-Neukölln. Dead at 20 years of age for the crime of wanting to live in freedom. A memorial column commemorating Chris Gueffroy was erected at Britzer Zweigkanal in Berlin-Treptow in 2003 in honor of his 35th birthday. A biography and account of the circumstances that led to his death and the aftermath are available online.


On the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall being torn down U2 sang at the Brandenburg Gate and on the 25th anniversary the performance that stands out is Peter Gabriel's singing a cover of David Bowie's song Heroes which has lyrics that make allusion to the Berlin Wall:

I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing, by the wall (by the wall)
And the guns shot above our heads
(over our heads)
And we kissed,
as though nothing could fall
(nothing could fall)
And the shame was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever
Then we could be Heroes,
just for one day

It is an appropriate song for the occasion. Prior to the start of the song the pictures of the victims who were killed trying to cross the Berlin Wall from 1969 through 1989 were shown on a giant outdoor screen. Walking through the Berlin Wall Memorial and listening to the names of the victims and seeing them is a powerful experience that all who visit the German capital should experience.

Google made public a video on the 25th anniversary showing where pieces of the Berlin Wall have been placed around the world and in Miami a piece of the Berlin Wall was unveiled in a ceremony at Miami Dade College in Downtown Miami.

Berlin: Rosenstrasse and The Wall

The Berlin Wall Memorial

Visiting Berlin in the year of the 25th anniversary that the Berlin Wall was finally torn down with a Cuban human rights icon is a once in a life time experience. Above is The Berlin Wall Memorial with the names, and in most cases the photographs of the 136 Germans killed trying to cross the Wall. In West Germany it was known as the "death strip." Estimates place the total number killed as greater than 200. The Wall began to be built by the communist East on August 13, 1961 and was finally torn down on November 9, 1989.

Chris Gueffroy 1968 - 1989

One of the last victims, Chris Gueffroy was born on June 21, 1968 and shot dead on February 5, 1989 trying to cross on the Britzer Zweigkanal, near the small garden colonies “Harmonie“ and “Sorgenfrei” on the sector border between Berlin-Treptow and Berlin-Neukölln. The Wall is a symbol of communist totalitarianism and control celebrated by tyrants such as Fidel Castro who visited there in1972 addressing the border guards and praising their "work."

The Memorial to the Rosenstrasse Protest in Berlin

Amidst the dark shadows of Nazi and Communist totalitarianism shines a powerful example of hope found in the example set by German housewives who using nonviolent means rescued their Jewish husbands who had been abducted in 1943 to be sent to the death camps. This led to a sustained civic action on Rosenstrasse Street. The book, A Force More Powerful, describes how these housewives frustrated the aims of Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich:

Word spread quickly about the abductions in Berlin, and before long a group of non-Jewish German women had gathered on the Rosenstrasse with food and other personal items for their Jewish husbands and children, whom they believed were being held inside. One of the women, Charlotte Israel, arrived and found 150 women already huddled outside. She asked one of the guards for her husband's potato ration cards, which he went to get. On the back of a card, her husband Julius wrote, "I'm fine." Other women began asking for personal effects to confirm that their husbands were inside and, soon after, began demanding their release. One woman's brother, a soldier on leave, approached an SS guard and said, "If my brother-in-law is not released, I will not return to the front." The crowds grew considerably despite the winter chill, and soon women waited outside day and night, holding hands, singing songs, and chanting "Let our husbands go!" By the second day of the protest, over 600 women were keeping a vigil on the Rosenstrasse.
This was not the first time many of these women had voiced dissent. For over a decade they and their families had challenged Nazi racial policies through letters and small demonstrations, insisting that the regime would be hurting fellow Germans by persecuting their Jewish spouses. Hitler and his circle had always tried to minimize unrest and avoid the kind of domestic opposition that German rightists saw as the "stab in the back" that had crippled the German effort during World War I. Until this point the regime had largely managed to keep the genocide against the Jews a secret. But when it affected a group who were unafraid to speak out against Nazi policies, that secrecy was jeopardized.
What gave further resonance to the wives' protest was that it was happening in the heart of Berlin, a city that had never been enthusiastic about Nazism. Cosmopolitan Berliners always saw it as a crude Bavarian aberration. Moreover, Berlin was the German base for foreign news organizations that still operated during the war. If political malcontents or the wire services were to get wind of the protest, the myth of the omnipotent Nazi state could be exposed. In fact, London radio did report on the demonstrations.
By the third day SS troops were given orders to train their guns on the crowd but to fire only warning shots. They did so numerous times, scattering the women to nearby alleyways. But the wives always returned and held their ground. They knew the soldiers would never fire directly at them because they were of German blood. Also, arresting or jailing any of the women would have been the rankest hypocrisy: According to Nazi theories, women were intellectually incapable of political action. So women dissenters were the last thing the Nazis wanted to have Germans hear about, and turning them into martyrs would have ruined the Nazis' self-considered image as the protector of motherhood.
The campaign soon expanded to include women and men who were not in mixed marriages. The ranks of protestors bulged to a thousand, with people chanting to let the prisoners go and taunting the SS soldiers. Joseph Goebbels, seeking to stop more from arriving, closed down the nearest streetcar station, but women walked the extra mile from another station to reach Rosenstrasse 2-4. By the end of the week Goebbels saw no alternative but to let the prisoners go. Some thirty-five Jewish male prisoners, who had already been sent to Auschwitz, were ordered to gather their belongings and board a passenger train back to Berlin.

My first stop in Berlin was to visit The Berlin Wall Memorial and pay my respects to those who died seeking freedom and those who in November of 1989 nonviolently tore down the wall. My final stop was to visit Memorial to the Rosenstraße Protest, the place were German housewives took a stand and saved their husbands.

The power of nonviolence when properly applied with sound strategy forced the Nazi Third Reich to blink in 1943 and brought down a hated symbol of Communism in 1989.

A segment of the Berlin Wall converted into protest art